LaFayette City Council discusses 10-Year Water Line Plan
BY KADIE TAYLOR
THE LAFAYETTE SUN
LAFAYETTE — The LaFayette City Council, Harmon Engineering and Contracting Vice President Austin Harmon and city employees gathered at the new City Hall on Monday, June 29, to review the 10-Year Water Line Rehab Plan and to discuss rate increases.
“The city asked us to put together a 10-Year Water Distribution Rehabilitation Plan,” Harmon said. “We started that simply with a review of the history; some of the information we've gotten this year came from Chief Doody, when they did flow rates on the fire hydrants… When we first graphed this, this gave us a lot of, a lot of information about how the water moves through the city, how your flow rates work and how your pressures work.”
Harmon presented a map of LaFayette with streets labeled in colors to determine the need for urgency of water line intervention. Harmon said the roads with black lines have been repaired within around the last 10 years, and the highest priority he sees is outlined in blue.
“If I have my way, [for] the first project we can run a 12-inch line from where the water comes in off Alabama Avenue across 431 to the other side, about to Farmers and Merchants Bank,” he said. “You got a lot of connection points right there, and it would do great things for the water flow rate and the pressure on the east side of the city.”
Council Member for District A Emily Milford asked Harmon about grant writing and if the city should look to outsource grant writing. Harmon said Harmon Engineering will not do grant writing but will coordinate with a company hired by the city to do grant writing. A representative from BSI Engineering, Kathryn Welch, said engineers from her company specialize in grant writing and would help the city find and win grants if hired.
“We're happy to work with BSI, we work on a lot of stuff together anyway,” he said. “We all want to get in this together and put the best plan forward, put levels of priorities together. You start with [grantwriters], you tell them we got a plan moving forward, we need help getting this across, so we can make the next part of this work. It's huge, and this is what we do, and they do for a lot of cities: help put together master plans.”
Harmon said as water lines are replaced, along with regular system flushing, there should be an increase in the consistency of clear water.
“Alan has done a great job flushing the system, and as we upgrade these pipes, he'll be able to flush harder and create more turbulence, and get that kind of stuff out of the system. That'll be huge,” he said. “An increase in the flow is a big part of it; it's not just the ground of water.”
With the roads on the map broken into five categories of importance in priority, Harmon said the roads can be broken into even smaller sections of improvements to accommodate what works best for the city.
“I will wait on y'all to decide on some funding, and what I will say is these are five categories we can break these down further into further bite-sized pieces,” he said. “We just didn't want to overwhelm you. We've got 40 projects lined up in this order, and we're kind of putting them in zones of importance, so every dollar can be used somewhere; we can do something with it, but what we talked about in here was whether your annual budget allocations are dedicated for grant matching or water improvements. If you set a number, we're going to spend this on water, whether it's chasing grants or laying pipe somewhere. I mean, we can take this down to one street at time.”
