Following the effects of Hurricane Delta, which left the City of Baldwin’s water tank with only a foot and a half of water inside and a city-wide call for water conservation, the city is considering plans for major upgrades to their water treatment facility.
The main problem that resulted in Baldwin’s low water reservoirs following the hurricane were large quantities of soil in the city’s water.
“When there’s such a huge rain event like that, you got all kinds of soil that’s washing down into the [Chatahoochee] river, [the soil] gets sucked up [into the water] and it has to be treated, and part of that being treated is allowing that soil to settle down into the clarifiers and being backwashed,” Councilwoman Alice Venter said. “But there was so much in there that you guys [the Baldwin Water Department] were producing water for two hours, and then had to take 45 minutes to backflush it. I mean, we just weren’t keeping up.”
Engineer Fletcher Holliday says these upgrades, namely those surrounding Baldwin’s water pre-treatment, would eliminate this problem.
“The previous rain event that we had, which created issues in regards to treating water, that would be non-existent,” Holliday said. “This pre-treatment system would allow the […] water quality to be much higher than we currently have.”
The city’s water treatment facility, built in 1987, hasn’t had any major upgrades in the 33 years it has been in operation. The upgrades the city is considering would bring the City of Baldwin’s water treatment up to current standards and would produce four million gallons of water per day. Holliday expects the upgrades the city is looking into to last for thrity to fourty years, and the project to be completed within 12-16 months of approval.
“I think that the need for that pre-treatment [facility] if ever that it was demonstrated, it was demonstrated here very recently,” Mayor Joe Elam said. “As we know, we are just part of the mechanism that makes the whole Southern part of this county function [by] providing water to [it]. So we’ll come forward with some more information as we start to answer some of these questions.”
