The Jackson County Water and Sewerage Authority took action last Thursday toward upgrading its connection for backup water supply from Commerce.
Having purchased a one-acre lot at 84 Wheeler Cemetery Road last month on which to replace a 16-year-old “temporary” pump station a few feet away, the authority voted Thursday to authorize up to $10,000 to demolish and remove a ramshackle former residence — and a pile of debris in its back yard — from the site.
Ultimately, the authority plans to spend approximately $350,000 more to purchase, house, secure and connect a new pump station at the site.
The current pump station allows the authority to buy water from Commerce. The authority pays the city $3,000 a month, which entitles it to one million gallons of water.
It has been a key source of backup water. In the last drought, forced to reduce its reliance on the declining Bear Creek Reservoir, the authority supplemented its supply via the Wheeler Cemetery Road connection and pump station.
“We pumped one million gallons a day through the existing pump station,” manager Eric Klerk reminded the authority. “In 2007 and 2008 we ran more than 100 million gallons through that station. That’s our main backup supply if Bear Creek goes offline.”
Two factors drive the plan to upgrade the system.
First, the owners of the property housing the “temporary” facility — a small, fiberglass building on a lot at the corner of Wilson Cemetery Road and Hwy. 98 — want the pump station removed. Secondly, because of the importance of the connection, the authority feels a need to upgrade the pump station, including enabling it to pump water from its system to the city should a need arise. Currently, water can only move from Commerce to the county system.
Klerk indicated that the purchase and installation of the factory-made pump station will be part of the 2013 capital improvements budget.
Work Begins On East Jackson Project
Klerk also announced that work was due to begin Monday on a project expected to lead to another connection with the Commerce system.
“The Harris Lord Cemetery Road project is finally ready to start,” he told the authority.
That project, requested by a number of Harris Lord Cemetery Road residents due to their failing wells, extends a line from Hoods Mill Road that currently terminates at U.S. 441. The project will put line under U.S. 441, then east on Harris Lord Cemetery Road, turning east on Bolton Garrison Road to Hwy. 334, then north to a connection with the Commerce system in the vicinity of Huber Engineered Woods.
“This has been, I think from the time they first came in here, about 14 months in the making already,” Klerk said. “It doesn’t seem like it, but it’s been 14 months or so.”
The authority and Commerce have a memorandum of understanding about the joint construction of a pump station that would enable each to buy or sell water to the other, but as of yet there is no official agreement on that part of the project.
