BY LISA STAYTON
MOUNTAIN CITIZEN
INEZ — Martin County Water District hopes to resolve an issue that has become an ongoing financial drain on its resources and patience. The district is pressing for reimbursement of the steep costs of renting and fueling a raw water intake pump—expenses MCWD says are tied to Xylem Water Solution’s obligations at the raw water intake.
During a Nov. 26 board meeting, water board chairman Tim Thoma announced that the Big Sandy Area Development District, grant administrator of MCWD’s raw water intake project, had sent Xylem a formal demand for reimbursement. The letter, sent last week, gave Xylem 45 days to respond.
At Thoma’s suggestion, the water board decided last week to escalate matters. They voted to request that Big Sandy ADD pull Xylem’s bond on the project and direct funds from that bond to the water district.
“It’s been my experience that pulling a company’s bond typically motivates them to do something,” Thoma said. “That something may not be favorable, but they do something. It’s better than sitting back and not having any response.”
Financial strain on the water district is mounting. By early October, MCWD had spent $404,000 on fuel and pump rentals for the raw water intake to date this year.
“Please keep in mind that this is money that we didn’t budget,” Thoma emphasized. “This comes from our operations and maintenance expense. It’s really putting a burden on the district to have to rent this pump and pay for the fuel.”
MCWD is under the management of Alliance Water Resources from Missouri. Back in May of this year, then-Alliance Water Resources vice president and director of operations Tony Sneed shared an audit of the district’s 2023 financials. The audit detailed how renting a pump and covering diesel costs was draining an average of $35,000 a month, causing a 14% budget overspend in 2023.
While revenues rose slightly for the year—by $59,000 or 2% to a total of $3.26 million, operating expenses surged by $286,000 or 9.5%, reaching $3.3 million. Sneed attributed it to the cost of pump rental and fuel while awaiting the completion of the raw water intake project that began in October 2021.
The latest burden of the pump rental and fuel cost also started in 2021 but for a different reason. And it is not the first time that MCWD has paid the toll of renting a pump.
Martin County depends on raw water pumped from the Tug River at Calf Creek and sent 5 miles to the Crum Reservoir on Turkey Creek Road. The reservoir holds up to 512 million gallons when full and supplies water to the treatment plant through a gravity-fed system.
In 2020, after renting pumps for more than two years due to the old pump failing at the river, the district was in a $1 million financial hole. But hope arrived when the district used federal grant funding and purchased two new Godwin raw water intake pumps. One was a 4 mgd (million gallons per day HL260M Dri-Prime) and the other was a 2 mgd pump (HL160M Dri-Prime). The two pumps came with variable frequency drives and a river screen at the cost of $470,386. Xylem supplied the equipment.
The district finally saw the installation of the new 2 mgd pump in mid-2020. The pump worked efficiently and remained operational until the end of January 2021 when it fell victim to the flooding of the Tug River. Despite repairs, the pump has not worked since, forcing the district to rely on rented pumps since mid-summer 2021.
To further complicate the district’s situation, Xylem delivery personnel allegedly dropped the 4 mgd pump during delivery in 2020. The larger pump was immediately returned to the manufacturer for repairs, water officials said.
On Sept. 7, 2021, according to former Alliance manager Craig Miller, the new 4 mgd pump that had never been used was finally installed but did not function.