C-Falls water upgrades could cost a homeowner about $2 more a month

A plan to upgrade the Columbia Falls water system will cost the average homeowner a little more than $2 a month, according to an engineering firm working on the project.

Engineer Ryan Mitchell of Robert Peccia and Associates presented a preliminary engineering report to city council members Monday night that outlines the strategy for upgrading the system. The preferred alternative would be for the city to dig one new well with a capacity of about 1,800 gallons per minute.

In addition, Mitchell said the city should try to find as many of its leaks as possible. The city water system loses about 45 percent of the water it pumps daily, or about 690,000 gallons.

While that is a lot of water, Mitchell noted that a typical small community water system will lose about 25 percent of its water, while even a large city will lose about 10 percent.

Mitchell noted the water rate hike doesn’t have to come immediately anyway. He said the project, which would be primarily funded by $800,000 in city reserves and a $700,000 state revolving loan fund loan, wouldn’t be financed until 2020 anyway.

If council approves the alternative, the base water rate per equivalent dwelling unit would rise from $15.52 per month to $17.63 per month, or a $2.11 increase.

In Columbia Falls, the plan is to install water meters in about 16 different locations to try to pinpoint leaks to certain areas or neighborhoods. The first concern is the main water line from the city’s water tank north of town back down the city. That’s one of the oldest lines in the system. The city currently has two wells that are just under 300 feet deep, the Clare Well and the LP Well. Water from the wells is then pumped up to a holding tank near the Cedar Creek Reservoir. The city has 42 miles of water pipe.

Drilling a new well and the associated costs with finding the leaks, is estimated to cost about $1.5 million, Mitchell said.

“The goal is to get leakage down to 25 percent,” Mitchell said.

The leaks could be dozens of small leaks or one or two big ones. It doesn’t take much of a hole to leak a lot of water. A quarter-inch hole in a pipe with 60 pounds of pressure per square inch will lose a whopping 14,932 gallons a day.

Where does the leaked water go? Because Columbia Falls has gravel soils, it primarily seeps back into the ground and the water table, Mitchell noted. In soils that are impermeable, like clay, a leak will often follow the pipe to a house and person will end up with water in their basement or crawl space. That rarely happens in Columbia Falls.

The city has been tracking down leaks for years and continues to do so.

They ask if any homeowner has a spot in their lawn that stays green all year long or they can hear water running without having a leak in their house, to call the city public works department, as that could be a leak.

The city has just under 2,000 hookups total. Right now, the city’s two wells don’t meet Department of Environmental Quality standards, because if one went down, the other couldn’t provide enough water to fight a fire or other major water use event.

Council took no action on Mitchell’s report or the water rate hike. They’ll wait until they find out the costs of proposed sewer upgrades before making a decision.