BY ROGER SMITH
MOUNTAIN CITIZEN
INEZ — Crum Reservoir hit a possibly all-time low level Tuesday morning, prompting concerns among residents about the possibility of a major water outage in Martin County. Dead fish were found scattered along the reservoir’s banks, highlighting the severity of the situation.
With the current water levels even lower than those recorded in January 2018 when a state of emergency was declared, the lack of an intake pump at the river has become a primary concern for the Martin County Water District. Over the past two years, the district has relied on atypical rainfall patterns and occasional rental pumps to supply the reservoir.
While residents expressed their worries, Martin County Water District chairman Jimmy Don Kerr remained optimistic. According to Kerr, only two gravity feed pipes were above the water level Tuesday, and the third gravity feed, which had been inoperable until fall 2022, was still supplying the treatment plant.
“We have good flow right now,” Kerr reassured Tuesday evening.
In an effort to address the situation, the water district worked to install a rental pump at the river Tuesday morning. Kerr described the pump as a “600 HP pump” capable of delivering 4 million gallons per day to the reservoir.
“We are currently only producing 1.34 million gallons a day, so we’re still OK,” Kerr stated. “We are still working well, which shows how much improvement we have made.”
The Kentucky Division of Water, which expressed “serious concern” in a written report March 21, 2021, when the reservoir pool level was only 14 feet below normal, visited the reservoir Monday to assess the situation.
“We are monitoring the reservoir levels visually and checking the pump status,” said John Mura, communications director with the Department for Energy and Environment. “The reservoir continues to drop and is down several feet from Thursday. The second intake is about halfway exposed, and the third intake is still not visible below the surface. The system is treating less than 1,000 gallons per minute, and the system remains full.”
Martin County Judge/Executive Lon Lafferty said the time for action was before the reservoir reached such a critically low level.
“You don’t wait until your gas tank is empty to put gas in it,” Lafferty said. “This is very concerning.”
In 2018, when the Martin County Water District lost its sole river intake pump, they were forced to rent pumps at a cost of approximately $18,000 per month, which deepened the district’s financial debt.
To mitigate future issues, the district invested nearly half a million dollars in the fall of 2019 to purchase two new pumps (2 MGD and 4 MGD) and a screen. However, the 2 MGD pump became submerged in floodwaters in early 2021. It has not been operational since, despite undergoing repairs. The new 4 MGD pump was only installed in the fall of 2021 but did not function correctly and was immediately returned to the manufacturer, where it remains. The district is currently embroiled in a dispute over repair costs.
“The larger pump is still at Xylem,” Kerr revealed. “We are waiting to finish the raw water intake project to utilize the small one. It won’t do what we need right now.”
According to Kerr, the water district aims to refill the 300-million-gallon reservoir within 15 days using the 4 MGD diesel-fired rental pump.
The raw water intake project has been under construction for nearly two years with no projected finish date.
