BY ROGER SMITH
MOUNTAIN CITIZEN
KERMIT, W.Va. — For the first time in a decade, households in East Kermit are drinking water drawn and treated in their own town again.
“On Friday, Kermit water was turned on for the first time in 10 years, back to the people of East Kermit,” Mayor Charles Sparks announced. “The line was washed out in March 2015. Floodwaters destroyed the line that was along the river. We have it running along U.S. 52 now. I want to give Louie Messer and his men a big thank you for their fine and quick work.”
After the 2015 flood, Kermit turned to the Mingo County Public Service District to supply water to East Kermit.
“I want to thank the Mingo PSD for furnishing the people of East Kermit for the past 10 years with water,” said Sparks.
Replacing the flood-ruined main required about 3,600 feet of new eight-inch pipe laid beside U.S. Route 52. The link lets Kermit reduce the cost of buying bulk water from Mingo County PSD.
Officials say pressure in the new line remains steady so no customer should notice a drop in flow.
The town is also working on a far larger task: gutting and rebuilding its 46-year-old water treatment plant. The work, Sparks said, “is making it like new — and that will last another 46 years or longer. This is all thanks to federal money and state money.”
The $3.4 million project — roughly $2.7 million from a congressional earmark and $686,000 from the state — touches every corner of the water treatment plant.
Plant stripped to the studs
The overhaul of the plant that sits off U.S. 52 safely above the 100-year floodplain at an elevation of about 633 feet, has many parts.
It gets a new roof and fence, upgraded electrical service, replacement panels, motors, switches and valves, exterior parts.
A state-of-the-art raw-water intake will cap all that off.
Inside, crews will swap out two 20-horsepower submersible raw-water pumps (767 gallons per minute at 68 total dynamic head), the flocculation paddles and drives, the chain-and-flight sludge collectors in the sedimentation basins and all three high-service pumps. The replacements are two 30-horsepower vertical turbine pumps (300 gallons per minute) and one 40-horsepower unit (350 gallons per minute).
A steel-framed metal building — heated, air-conditioned and fitted with a dehumidifier and lighting — will be erected over the sedimentation basins so operators can work year-round without braving the weather. Concrete tanks will be repaired, handrails replaced and valves upgraded.
Two emergency generators — one for the raw-water station, one for the plant — already keep essential equipment running during outages.
No expansion, but a modern cure
The plant will still treat about 330,000 gallons a day. Raw water will continue to come from the Tug Fork River. It is pumped through a submerged inlet, dosed with DelPac 20/20 and sodium hypochlorite in the rapid-mix basin, flocculated in twin basins, settled in sedimentation basins, filtered through gravity sand beds, disinfected again and lifted to storage tanks and the distribution grid.
According to the plan, work on the plant will proceed in phases so operations rarely have to pause.