Celina launches water system study

CELINA - An extensive analysis of the city's water treatment system and potential alternative sources of drinking water is underway by Hazen and Sawyer, a firm specializing in providing safe drinking water.

The firm began its work earlier this month and has up to a year to complete its $216,300 contract, according to mayor Jeff Hazel. It will be paid through an $8 million Ohio Environmental Protection Agency grant recently awarded to Celina to improve the quality of its drinking water, which is drawn from Grand Lake.

Hazen and Sawyer employees are analyzing the plant and its functions to help determine a potential course of action, Hazel said.

"They're doing a complete analysis of the water plant, all the treatment processes, the equipment we have, what we don't have. It's a pretty exhaustive analysis," Hazel said.

The nearly $7 million granular activated carbon filtration system added in 2008 to eliminate trihalomethanes - which lab tests have linked to some forms of cancer and other diseases - has prevented any contamination from entering the drinking water of the system's 11,000 homes, superintendent Mike Sudman has said in the past.

The city spends about $500,000 a year to treat the water chemically.

"We're looking at every element we can," Hazel said. "Our goal is to try to lessen the chemical cost of treatment and at the same time making sure we have very safe, pure drinking water for our residents and our citizens and our visitors."

City officials must use the grant money either to relocate its water treatment facility, partner with another political subdivision to access water sources, establish pipelines to access suitable water resources or treat drinking water.

Hazel wouldn't rule out a water partnership with St. Marys but said it would be very costly, perhaps costing as much as $30 million.

St. Marys Mayor Patrick McGowan recently sent Hazel and Celina City Council members a letter asking them to consider a drinking water partnership as St. Marys "is in the process of upgrading the water system, including a new water treatment facility, well and transmission line."

Many factors must be considered, such as a continental divide issue and the construction costs of extending water lines to St. Marys. Hazel said each mile of pipe would probably cost at least $1 million.

Hazel stressed the city is starting the process with the study of its water treatment process and possible alternative sources of drinking water.

"We are not under findings and orders," he noted. "We meet or exceed all of the currently known levels that we have from OEPA now from the drinking water division. We want to not only make sure that we maintain that, we want to look out ahead. We're trying to be very proactive in this nature."

Celina met the OEPA grant criteria of being located in both the Lake Erie and Ohio River drainage basins and "subject to the Great Lake-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact."

The compact heavily restricts diversions of water from the Great Lakes watershed. Groundwater cannot be drawn from the watershed unless it eventually is returned as treated effluent. Celina's sewage treatment plant lies south of the continental divide and its discharge flows away from the watershed.

"(St. Marys) is on the north side of the continental divide. We're on the south side," Hazel said. "There is no easy solution to that whatsoever."

"There is no good viable place for us to go north for our wastewater discharge because if you take water from the north, you have to put it back," he continued.

Also, creeks and streams north of Celina are already prone to flooding, Hazel noted.

"We're not going to exacerbate their problem by adding insult to injury," he said.

The compact is not just an excuse on the city's end, Hazel stressed.

"It's a very valid, legally binding treaty between Canada and the United States. We can't just ask somebody to waive that," he said.