News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Monterey officials plan to discuss protocols and ways to be better prepared in case another major water loss situation occurs.
A water main break drained the town’s entire water supply Wednesday night and forced area schools to close on Thursday.
Water plant supervisor Duane Jarrett said he plans to discuss the incident with the board of mayor and aldermen during next monthly meeting.
“We’re going to do some protocols at the next town meeting that could maybe help us out on this,” Jarrett said. “As with anything like this, you live and document. You keep moving with it and fine tune to make it better as you go.”
Jarrett said he immediately began implementing an emergency operations plan when he discovered the issue Thursday morning. Part of that plan involved issuing a water boil advisory and contacting local media outlets about the issue.
“It went smooth for what we went through,” Jarrett said. “It worked and I can’t see anywhere to tweak on that really.”
Jarrett said his department could have responded to the situation faster if an aging supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system had not failed.
“It’s supposed to let you know when things like this happen. It’s old and it failed,” Jarrett said. “At our last meeting they (aldermen) approved to rehab it.”
Jarrett said he also plans to approach the board about purchasing a stand alone telemetry system, which would send a text to his phone if water pressure begins to drop during the overnight hours.
Crews working the second shift left the plant about two hours before the line broke behind Save-A-Lot. Jarrett said a third shift would have sped up the response time.
“We are kind of a distressed area and we can’t afford to staff three shifts just for somebody to watch the tank levels,” Jarrett said. “That’s a lot of money over 10 years.”
Jarrett said Monterey is not unique in the situation it faced this week as many small communities across the state deal with aging infrastructure and control systems.
“Anytime you lay a water line it’s not if it’s going to break, it’s when. This one was just on a real sharp pointed rock and through the years it worked its way through and snapped it off,” Jarrett said. “But the infrastructure is getting aged and it needs to be on peoples minds so we can start coming up with budgets for this stuff.”
In the meantime, a water boil advisory remains in effect for Monterey water customers. Jarrett hopes to have the advisory lifted by 2:00 p.m. Friday.
