Celina to retain lake as water source

CELINA - The city will continue to draw its drinking water from Grand Lake into the future after an exhaustive, multiyear search of underground and surface alternatives came up dry.

Mayor Jeff Hazel, though, said officials plan to further update the water plant to ensure drinking water meets any future Ohio Environmental Protection Agency standards or regulations.

"We have taken (the search for better water quality) from a different direction than when we started when we thought we could go to groundwater, and it simply did not work," Hazel said. "We looked at a number of elements, including building above-ground reservoirs."

Officials hope to soon launch a six-week pilot study of new technology aimed at better removing organic solids from raw lake water in pretreatment. If the study is verified, officials would retrofit existing clarifiers with the technology, Hazel said. They're waiting for OEPA to green light the test.

"This is about getting ahead of that next step because as you all know, OEPA looks to make sure to have a safer tomorrow," Hazel told councilors at Monday night's regular meeting. "What we are looking at is getting ahead of the curve to fixing this for a long-term solution."

The city in 2016 was the recipient of an $8 million OEPA Drinking Water Solutions Grant. 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 to treat drinking water.

City officials are committed to enhancing the drinking water treatment process.

So far, $1.3 million has been spent for engineering services, an ozone replacement system and an advanced oxidation process using ultraviolet light that plant superintendent Mike Sudman last year said would treat for "remaining disinfection byproducts prior to the chlorine being added, any kind of minute pharmaceuticals that could be remaining, algal toxins that could get through the carbon."

"At this point our plan is to make our drinking water much safer than it ever has been to a point where we can get ahead of any further or future OEPA requirements," Hazel said, stressing drinking water produced today is "fully compliant with the Ohio EPA requirements."

After receiving a breakdown of grant expenditures, councilman Mike Sovinski pressed city administrators to better detail the ongoing use of the funds and the status of proposed improvements. He criticized administrators for not providing more updates.

"What are we looking at in terms of doing to achieve the goals this $8 million is supposed to give us?" he asked. "I guess I'm looking for more of a narrative update."

"The rest of this money is going to go to engineering and replacing the clarifiers with hopefully this pilot system we're doing, but we won't know that until we pilot it and see if it's approved through EPA," city safety service director Tom Hitchcock said.

Sovinski pushed for more details.

Hazel said when the city had obtained the grant, the original plan was to "get off the lake, go to groundwater."

Several wells were dug, but the prospect of shifting to an underground source was hindered by continental divide issues and poor quality water finds.

The Great Lake-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources 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 that watershed.

They had looked into drawing from a strong north-south flow of water that closely follows the ancient Teays River Valley.

"Once we did get into some areas that we could have gone with the Teays, we found out … the groundwater that we got from the Teays was equally as bad in its own way as what the lake water is," Hazel said. "…We found out over about three years that wells were simply not going to work … the oil derricks that were on the lake were essentially what ended up (polluting) it."

Drinking water specialists Hazen and Sawyer had sought other solutions, Hazel said.

"Let's do an exhaustive analysis of both the water plant and wastewater plant, figure out how can we make this better," Hazel said.

Today, officials' hopes are pinned to the proposed pilot study.

Katharos Scientific LLC of Colorado had done preliminary work, including creating a prototype of the solid-removing technology, at a cost of $93,000. It was designed through Tri-Tech Engineering of Dayton.

"As this is coming together, we could be initiating a new standard for the state of Ohio in this pretreatment," Hazel insisted. "What we are looking for right now is something that is going to not only set the standard, but it's going to give a much higher degree of safety for our residents."

Still, Sovinski said he would like to set a commitee meeting to delve more deeply into the details and better explain to the public what officials have been doing to address drinking water quality.

"What you have basically summarized here in the last couple minutes is a lot of information I think that we should be able to look at in more detail," Sovinski said.

Celina is positioned to emerge as a leader in confronting algal-related problems also plaguing other bodies of water such as Lake Erie, Sovinski asserted.

"I think that the people that we have working in our water department are probably about as much as an expert in this country in how to treat highly organic waters as anybody," he said.