Four years ago, Nashville leaders were all but convinced that they’d have to find millions of dollars to replace water mains.
Frequent breaks were shutting down commerce in town, forcing boil orders. Nashville Utilities staff were fixing sometimes two or three leaks per day.
Water routinely leaking through aging pipes was causing the town big losses in revenue; some months as much as 40 percent of the water the town was buying to distribute to its customers was simply running into the ground, unmetered.
Customers’ water bills had gone up by as much as 26 percent to help plug the budget hole. If the town didn’t do something, another significant rate increase was coming down the pipe.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]In July 2014, the town council hired engineering firm Beam, Longest & Neff to study its water system. Much of it was installed in the 1950s and ‘60s, then replaced in 1977.
BLN found that the problem wasn’t so much with the mains themselves, it was the pressure of the water going through them.
Speaking at a ribbon-cutting ceremony on the project last month, BLN’s Chris Kaufman said Nashville’s water system is one of the most complex in the state, with the pressure caused by hills feeding it on two sides from two different water providers. BLN engineer Mark DeBruler told the council in 2016 that the problem was like high blood pressure; every leak was like having a small stroke, and having the town’s “arteries” replaced wouldn’t solve the problem without reducing the pressure.
The project which originally had an estimated price tag of $4.5 to $6.5 million became a much more manageable $1.8 million under BLN’s direction.
Through a combination of low-interest loans and grants through USDA Rural Development, the Indiana Office of Community and Rural Affairs and the Indiana Bond Bank, the town put together a financing package to take care of it without affecting customers.
On Aug. 28, a large group of state and town officials gathered to cut the ribbon on this project, which will wrap up this month with the repaving of Freeman Ridge Road.
Freeman Ridge residents received a brand-new, 8-inch water main to replace the 4-inch main that had been serving them. That larger main also provides another major water supply to the northern part of the system and downtown.
All 1,300 water customers throughout the Nashville Utilities system received new, digitally-read water meters, which not only made bills more consistent, but also allowed the town to save significantly on meter-reading staff costs.
In addition, an unneeded, deteriorating water storage tank and booster station were demolished at Al’s Garage on State Road 135 North; and a booster station was replaced at the bottom of Schooner Hill to help push water from East Monroe Water Company to a storage tank on Kelley Hill.
More work remains to be done to fix the pressure, said Nashville Utility Coordinator Sean Cassiday. The $1.8 million didn’t allow enough money to install more pressure-reducing valves throughout the water delivery system, but as this project wraps up, the town intends to apply for another loan to do that work. Cassiday expects this most recent slate of projects to come in under budget by about $300,000, which will make some space in the town’s budget for the valve project. When that might occur isn’t certain yet, but he’d like to see it happen this year.
“We still have problems, but we’re going to get them done. It just takes time,” town council President “Buzz” King told the dignitaries.
“This is a landmark point in our history.”
