One of the biggest surprises – and announcements – from Mayor Tom Henry’s State of the City address had little to do with city government at all.Fort Wayne will spend more than $20 million over the next few years to change the way it makes its water safe for consumption.
The Board of Public Works on Wednesday approved hiring Black & Veatch for $94,600 to provide engineering support as the city’s water plant converts to an ultraviolet disinfectant process.
Matthew Wirtz, deputy director of engineering for City Utilities, said the city will switch from using chlorine dioxide because of a federal mandate.
Communities such as Fort Wayne that use surface water as the source for drinking water are required to reduce the amount of Cryptosporidium the water contains. Cryptosporidium is a single-cell parasite that can cause a gastrointestinal illness called cryptosporidiosis.
There have been no problems from the parasite in Fort Wayne, but Wirtz said the federal changes stem from an outbreak in Milwaukee in 1993 that sickened more than 400,000 people. He said the city wouldn’t fight the rule changes – even though the city’s water is safe now – because the city has no choice but to comply.
“Safe drinking water is the most important thing City Utilities does,” he said.
The hired consultant will look at issues such as water taste to ensure the new process meets residents’ expectations.
Meeting the requirements won’t be cheap. Wirtz said it likely will require more than $20 million in investment at the water plant. The city began examining its options in 2006 before choosing ultraviolet.
The city will borrow money to finance the project, but Wirtz said it has not been determined whether a rate increase is necessary to pay back the loan. The switch will allow the city to cut its chlorine dioxide costs in half – it spent $240,535 on it in 2009 – but Wirtz said the city expects the ultraviolet process to add hundreds of thousands of dollars in electrical costs a year.
The process, used in New York and Seattle, dates to 1916 in the United States, according to the National Drinking Water Clearinghouse at West Virginia University. The process exposes water to radiation from UV light, which penetrates an organism’s cell walls and makes it impossible to reproduce.
Other options such as ozone water purification were examined, but those would have been more expensive because of the size of the city’s water plant.
Wirtz said the city could have simply added more chlorine dioxide to reduce parasite levels, but the federal government also lowered the amount of chemical byproduct communities are allowed to release, Wirtz said.
The engineering study is expected to be finished by July, and the city has until April 2012 to implement its changes. Wirtz said a two-year extension could be given if the city has started a large capital project, but he was hopeful the project will be complete by 2013.
