Water department equipment failure causes some outages

An equipment malfunction caused some residents in Marianna and Lee County to be without water during last week’s winter storm. Marianna Water Department Manager David Moneymaker explained that a piece of equipment on the main tank froze, causing the tank to shut down before employees realized there was a problem. “The main tank showed 30.1 feet of water, when it would normally show 29 or less, but they didn’t realize anything was wrong. Then the tank pressure went down to 8.8 feet and the chlorine tank was showing to be really high,” said Moneymaker. Several county residents and some in the city were without water on Wednesday while repairs were made. “It was just so cold that our instruments wouldn’t work properly and they didn’t know what was going on,” added Moneymaker, who was off work the latter part of last week. “We’re adjusting it through trial and error but it’s getting back to normal.” He said the department would submit water samples to the health department for testing but assured the community that the water, although currently discolored, is still safe to drink. “We’re steady flushing the system and trying to clear up the brown water we had,” he said. “The problem is this town has sections where there are still old cast iron pipes. When there are big temperature changes and the ground shifts a little, it can also cause breaks, and we had a main break last week. Moneymaker said the line broke along Arkansas Street, which caused five customers living in that area to be without water service overnight last Wednesday. “They were without water from that evening until about noon Thursday, when we had the repairs made,” said Moneymaker. “We went door to door and told them it would be the next day before we could get the repairs made.” He added the agency is working to address the problems with the old pipes and replacing them with PVC pipes as they can. “We’re working to address problems in both the city and county. We have a stack of pipe on the yard but we’re waiting for a contractor to come in and help replace the lines along Main Street first and then on Arkansas. That’s the plan, but we have to get with the engineers before we can start the work,” he added. Even though a line burst, Moneymaker said the agency was never under any type of boil order.

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