Hard water test dooms switch to new source

CELINA - City officials' hopes of finding an underground source of drinking water to replace Grand Lake have been foiled for now after tests at a potential site east of town revealed the water is too hard.

"The water was significantly harder than what we currently treat from the lake. It would cost significantly more to soften that water back to the levels that people are accustomed to right now," Hazel told the newspaper Monday night after the commitee of a whole meeting.

Councilman Jeff Larmore agreed the site is not a good option if customers would need to purchase water softeners.

However, Hazel insisted officials will continue to search aggressively for a new water supply, noting they are considering a few other properties, which he would not disclose.

"We are determined certainly to make a difference in Celina in the future to get off the surface water and to get into the wells," he said.

Hazel and other city officials will meet with Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and Ohio Department of Natural Resources officials next week.

"We're going to sit down and meet with the directors and their staff and we're going to strategize to look at some different alternatives and options," he said.

"One of our goals ... is to make sure that when we get that water source, we're going to get the best possible product for all of our residents and visitors," he added.

The city will not purchase the 16.43 acre property - north of Cisco Funeral Home along state Route 703 and south of the RJ Corman Railroad tracks - from owners John J. Bertke and James F. Lampert. The city late last year entered into a commercial lease with the option to buy the land for $750,000. It agreed to pay $20,000 to rent the property for a year.

Hazel said city law director George Moore will research whether the city must pay the $20,000.

"We didn't drill any wells. There is a pilot well that was drilled last year," he said, adding that pilot well now needs to be sealed.

The pilot well tapped into the Teays River Valley 350 feet below the surface.

"It could be simply just the area that we were drawing water from where we would have drilled, that we got into a pocket of very, very hard water," Hazel said. Tests also revealed chloride in the water, Hazel said. The chloride could be left over from oil wells drilled in the area in the early 1900s, Hazel said.

"There are multiple oil wells not only throughout the lake ... but also all along the lake on both sides and down the rivers. The oil wells certainly have an impact. Now, that's not to say oil is gushing into the Teays River Valley," Hazel said.