St. Clairsville gets deadlines from Ohio EPA on water system

The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency is giving the city of St. Clairsville a few deadlines for its water system.

-submit a plan of action

-make the necessary repairs to the water treatment plant.

A meeting was held last week in Columbus about the situation.

"I took two key points away from that meeting. One, the mayor has 14 days to respond in writing to the Ohio EPA to give them a plan -- and I emphasize plan -- of what the future holds for St. Clairsville's water system," City Service Director Jim Zucal said.

Zucal says St. Clairsville will then have 2 years to implement that plan and find a new water source.

"Right now, we've looked at other entities, I believe the mayor will expand upon that and she already has. The No. 1 choice right now is the Martins Ferry Water System."

St. Clairsville has also been talking with Belmont County about a partnership.

And Aqua Ohio's offer still stands through April, if the city decides to sell its water system.

Currently, the city's treatment plant draws water from the reservoir.

"There are three gates that we can draw water from, the top gate is the only one we can draw water from currently," Zucal said.

Zucal says the bottom two are not working properly and that's a big concern.

"When the water gets warm and the algal blooms increase, we want to be able to pull from the lower levels where it's cooler and not as much algae, but we can't do that because the mechanisms are rusted, corroded and covered with silt," he said.

At the water treatment plant, crews are currently in the process of replacing the carbon feed system.

One of the operators said that's one of many upgrades that's being made.

"We've made several upgrades,” operator Jeff Mottle said. “Our flow meters are all in place, our automatic valves for the filter system are in place, we're working on a few other things in the distribution system which hopefully in the next couple months, we'll get that ready and up and going."