Durbin Water Plant Seeing Dramatic Decrease In Water Loss

Snowshoe, Wv – Although the Durbin water project is not yet complete, the county Public Service District board is already seeing decreases in the amount of water loss from the system that serves the Bartow, Frank, and Durbin areas in northern Pocahontas County. The water plant in Durbin has experienced over 50% water loss in recent years from old and worn out pipes. During the monthly meeting of the PSD Tuesday night, water plant manager Rickey Barkley said the amount of water being saved is dramatic.

“Basically the second service they worked on – it had a major leak in it” says Barkley. “And my estimate is that it was probably in the neighborhood of 40 to 50,000 [gallons] per day, and it wasn’t surfacing nowhere [sic]. They probably found six more that week, and they were smaller leaks, I call them pinhole leaks; the first one the three-quarter inch line was almost completely in two. I usually do like a three or four day average – we were pumping right at 185,000 up until yesterday, now we’re down to about 115,000.”

Barkley says they’ve gone from pumping water 15 hours a day, 7 days a week, to about 8 or 9 hours a day. And he expects that number to decrease even more after the rest of the water service locations are examined.

WD Smith, Executive Director of the Region 4 Planning and Development Council, was also on hand to go over the financial aspects of the Durbin water project.

“Rather small project, totally funded by the state Infrastructure council” says Smith “total project funding is $592, 500.00. If you approve these invoices tonight, you will have agreed to pay a total of $110, 274.81, $38,000.00 tonight and $71,000.00 from loan closing, which still leave $483,225.19 remaining in the project budget so you see we’re just getting started.”

Smith took the time to go over the project in detail with Board Chairman Tom Shipley and board member David Litsey. Board member Amon Tracey was not at the meeting due to illness. A motion to pay the invoices was approved.

In other business, the board approved the following:

To write a letter of engagement to the law firm of Spellman Thomas for work on the Silver Creek NPDES permit

Approved paying Potesta Eng $4500.00 to do an evaluation on a land parcel near Silver Creek for use as a wetland area

And approved several capital improvement items as submitted by Sewer Plant manager Lloyd Coleman.