ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, February 7, 1996 TAG: 9602070017
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG
SOURCE: BRIAN KELLEY STAFF WRITER
Two Prices Fork residents spoke for their neighbors Monday night, saying they want more answers about recent problems with the water system in their community.
Renet Austin and Sally Greenfield, both Montgomery Farms subdivision residents, called on the Montgomery County Public Service Authority to let residents know what's going on with their water system as soon and as clearly as possible.
What they ended up hearing was, in effect, "we're working on it."
PSA Chairman Ira Long said afterward he was satisfied the authority's staff had done everything it could to notify the public of problems.
For nearly a year the county has been negotiating with Blacksburg to provide water to areas just outside of town such as Prices Fork, a small rural enclave just west of town.
So far, Blacksburg has resisted expanding water service into unincorporated areas of the county. That's because the Town Council sees utility issues linked to the larger issue of how quickly and densely now-rural areas will develop, especially ones that don't pay town taxes and may want more town services.
The issue came home to Austin, Greenfield and their neighbors late last month - in fact, it came right out of their faucets the weekend of Jan. 20.
Austin showed the PSA members - the same seven people who sit on the elected Board of Supervisors - a baby bottle of muddy water that she said came from her tap Jan. 20. She said she's received several different explanations of what caused the murky water, and also about why the PSA was so slow to recommend that residents boil the water in case of surface contamination.
On Jan. 22 - a day after a PSA well operator confirmed the problem - the authority did issue a boil recommendation to the Prices Fork system's 250 customers. Three days later, the authority lifted the recommendation after testing showed no health risks, but urged customers to conserve water until it could bring a second well back into service. That conservation notice was lifted a day later. Though the boil and conservation notices were hand-delivered to the PSA's customers, the authority did not notify news media until late Jan. 25.
Greenfield said she was worried about how such situations would be handled in the future. She said she was concerned that there isn't enough water in the system to fight a fire at Prices Fork Elementary School.
Most of the county's rural schools face the water-supply question, and i'ts an issue in proposed utility expansions for the new elementary in Riner. Greenfield said the water often has a heavy smell of chlorine.
Both women said later it took repeated telephone calls to the PSA on Jan. 22 to get an announcement from the authority about the cloudy water.
PSA engineer Jerry Mabry said the water problems came from two sources: first, a line broke; and second, a pump was adjusted to pump too hard and may have dislodged a seam of mud in the well and pulled it into the system. To clear the discolored water, the PSA used about half the water in its 100,000-gallon tank to flush the pipes before taking the well off line for inspection. That left the remaining well straining to refill the tank overnight. The second well wasn't put back into service until the Health Department gave the OK on water samples from it Jan. 26.
Once it was back in service, the two wells could easily fill the tank.
The Prices Fork system still lacks a long-term solution. And it had minor problems again last week with three separate breaks in 1-inch service lines, Mabry said. PSA officials say the water system is nearing the limit of its ability to take on new customers until the water issues are resolved.
But a solution won't come cheap. An engineering report Monday estimated it would cost $900,000 to build a line linking Prices Fork to the Blacksburg system; a more expensive alternative would be building a new water line to the Radford Army Ammunition Plant for about $1.3 million, said PSA consultant R.A. "Chip" Worley of Anderson and Associates Inc. Either option could be paid for with low-interest loans from the federal government.
LENGTH: Medium: 74 linesby CNB