Hydrant testing nears completion
Jun. 28—An assessment on the Claremore water distribution system is 95 percent complete, City Engineer Garrett Ball said.
The project began in February 2020 and was expected to take six to 12 months. Ball said there were no issues, but the assessment has taken longer than they thought it would. He said he expects completion by the end of the year.
"We're actually held up right now by some street reconstruction over in the Westwood edition," he said. "That's the only area that we've actually got to finish up on our assessment."
Ball said they are checking 950 fire hydrants and 2,000 valves.
The project includes exploring throughout the entire water distribution system, exercising valves and fire hydrants, flushing the main water lines where possible, inspecting fire hydrants and servicing them if needed.
Ball said 70 percent of the system is between 50 to 100 years old.
He said the assessment has gone very well.
"We've got a lot of good information that's gonna help us move forward and get a lot of things based on the distribution system," he said.
Ball said the number one goal of the assessment was to was to identify issues within the water distribution system and create a plan to fix it.
Ball said during during the process they found over 50 closed valves that were closed for unknown reasons.
"So, every time that we find a closed valve like that, that's a dead end in the system," he said. That causes quality issues, that causes available fire flow issues, causes water hammer issues, which lead to more breaks. So, we've actually made some big improvements just by going through and assessing the system."
Once the assessment is completed, Ball said he will create a report to present to the city council regarding the findings. Then they will start designing a big rehab project.
"We're probably looking at two years before that actually gets kicked off," he said.
According to a previous Progress article, Claremore has dedicated approximately $5 million through 2021 to improve its water distribution system.
"The $5 million that we were talking about then was going toward a big rehab project when we got done with the assessment part," Ball said. "And we're still planning to do that, it's just taken a little longer to get there."
