TORRINGTON – The Torrington City Council voted unanimously on Jan. 21 to purse a Wyoming Water Development Commission groundwater grant for an emergency well after AVI Engineering identified the municipal water distribution’s lone area that could be considered risky. 

Bruce Perryman, of AVI Engineering, told the council that his firm’s Level One WWDC Study is now 70 percent complete and should be finished in May. At this point, the firm has identified the city’s main 24-inch line from the well fields to the water treatment facility as one potential liability. If that line were to fail during a peak usage day in the summer, Perryman said, it could cause major issues for residents. 

“You’ve got an abundant supply of ground water,” Perryman said. “The one place where there’s a little bit of risk is if you have a break on that 24-inch transmission line that goes out to the golf course wells, you only have well No. 15 that pumps directly into the distribution system. 

“With your demands, in the winter time it probably wouldn’t be a problem. If it were a peak day in the summertime, you’d have to go into emergency procedures and probably run out of water within a couple of days. Well No. 15 probably wouldn’t be able to keep up.”

The solution would be to drill an ‘emergency well’ that could help meet the demands in the event that main line was to fail. An emergency well, he said, would keep the city’s main water tanks full during a peak usage day. 

“One thing that we’re recommending is called an emergency well,” Perryman said. “It would be another municipal production well, close to the treatment plant, that can tie easily into the system and produce additional water if you ever lost the transmission main to the golf course wells. That’s probably where your most vulnerability is.”

Perhaps fortunately for the city, the WWDC has just opened applications for $2 million in groundwater grant funds. The council authorized Water Supervisor Tom Troxell to pursue the grant funds. 

“The benefit of the groundwater grant program is that it’s a 75 percent - 25 percent split, so the town would only pay 25 percent,” Perryman said. 

Perryman said AVI has completed many of the main steps of the level one study. He said the firm collected data from the city’s distribution system and built a model to test various scenarios to identify potential issues, like the main break. 

“We proceeded to collect all of the water assets of the town – canals, fire hydrants, wells – everything that is involved in the distribution of potable water for the city,” Perryman said. “From that, we built a hydraulic model of the entire system. We came up and we tested over 20-some fire hydrants to help calibrate them. We’ve got that complete now so we can very easily run a lot of scenarios on how we can improve flows up to the tank by the hospital, see where bottlenecks are, and if you want to plug in a new main somewhere, it’s very easy to do now.”

One of the biggest recommendations from AVI so far is the city should replace its four-inch water mains with a more updated system. 

“There are some low-hanging fruit, as far as recommendations – upgrade your four-inch mains,” he said. “If you don’t replace those, you can’t keep fire flow requirements for residential.”

Later that night, the council awarded a pair of contracts to Paul Reed Construction of Gering, Neb., to tackle the replacement of large sections of the four-inch ductile mains, upgrading with an eight-inch PVC main. 

The first project will be to replace 650 feet of the four-inch main on East D street. That project will cost $175,000. 

“The background for this project is that they will construct 650 feet of 8-inch PVC water line,” Public Works Director Jeff Harkins said. “That will replace the 4-inch ductile water main. In addition, we’ll have reconnection of existing services, repaving affected street sections and replacing curb, gutter and sidewalk.”

A separate project will replace 910 feet of 4-inch ductile main in favor of the eight-inch PVC on West C Street between 23rd and 25th Avenues. That project will cost $190,000 with similar goals, Harkins said. 

“This project will be constructing 910 feet of 8-inch PVC water main, which is replacing the 4-inch ductile water main,” Harkins said. “Just like the last project, this will include reconnecting the existing services, repaving affected street sections and replacing damaged curb, gutter and sidewalk.”

Both bids were accepted unanimously.