Growth puts pressure on Jacksonville's water
Brandon Hollingsworth
Issue date: 10/25/07 Section: News
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While the drought is the topic of conversation across the state, city leaders and water engineers are focusing on an even larger concern looming over Jacksonville, Anniston and other municipalities in the county: a booming population and its growing demand for water.
The population of Calhoun County rose from 112,249 as of the 2000 Census to 112,903 in a 2006 Census Bureau update, a growth of 0.6 percent. In Jacksonville the increase has been even greater, from 8,404 in 2000 to 9,114 in 2006, an 8.5 percent boost.
Add to that JSU's campaign to increase student enrollment to 10,000 by 2008, and the numbers tell the story: strain on the city's aging water system will only grow in coming years.
It's a problem constantly sitting on Chris Patterson's mind. Patterson is the wastewater plant manager for the city of Jacksonville's treatment plant. At his office off Highway 204, Patterson displays maps of the city water system with pipes color-coded for different flow levels (the amount of water the pipes can carry).
In residential areas, the pipes are small, only six to eight inches in diameter. In downtown and near the university, the pipes get larger to satisfy greater demand, to about 10 inches. Only a few of the pipes are 12 to 16 inches, capable of carrying the biggest flows. The problem, according to Patterson, is that there aren't nearly enough of those larger pipes.
"The biggest thing we're trying to do right now is beef up our system with a 12-inch main," Patterson said.
That main is a pipe that ties into Anniston's city water system at Jacksonville Medical Center. Patterson estimates that the Anniston tie-in delivers some 11 million gallons a month to Jacksonville, but only in certain areas. Currently, the residential developments and businesses on the city's south side reap the benefits of the tie-in, but not downtown and the northern half of the city, including JSU.
Patterson says town officials are in talks with the Anniston Water Works to extend that 12-inch main all the way through downtown, terminating at Mountain St. The extension would cost close to a million dollars, but would greatly increase water flow to areas that now rely on smaller pipes.
The water in those pipes comes from two major sources: Big Springs, located in downtown, and Germania Springs, located about two miles northeast of JSU.
Springs, which discharge groundwater from openings in rock, are less susceptible to droughts than surface water sources, such as rivers and lakes. But they're not invincible. At least one spring in Calhoun County dried up this year, according to Patterson, and water levels at Germania Springs are down this fall.
"It's running about 25 inches below normal," Patterson said.
In addition to new pipes, the Water Works and Sewer Board is looking into the possibility of drilling a deep well to provide additional groundwater. Such a well would be much less vulnerable to rainfall fluctuations and other climatological factors that can spell disaster for a spring. Those plans, however, are still in preliminary stages and won't produce results for some time.
"Right now the Geological Survey has to come up with a list of sites," Patterson said. "Then, we go into test drilling for the most feasible location."
As far as when such a well would produce potable water, "we haven't even looked that far ahead," according to Patterson. "It's definitely a longer-term fix."
Solving Jacksonville's water problems could go beyond new pipes or sources of groundwater. City councilman George Areno is taking a cue from the burgeoning "green" environmental movement, proposing JSU use recycled water for irrigation and landscaping.
Areno's plan calls for filtered wastewater, called greywater, to be used for watering grass and other irrigation needs at the university. Such a system would reduce the amount of fresh water JSU uses, and would provide a way to return greywater to the soil, filtering back to the groundwater from which it came.
"The less (drinkable) water we use, the better our wells recharge," Areno said. "Hopefully, everybody will benefit from it."
Areno's plan calls for wastewater from homes and businesses to be treated in the city's treatment plant on Hwy. 204. The greywater wouldn't be drinkable, but it could be used to irrigate lawns across campus. For the plan to be implemented, new pipes would have to be laid from the treatment plant to the university, and pre-existing sprinkler systems would have to be tied to the new system-a laborious process.
Greywater recycling a concept that is catching on in many areas of the country, especially on the West Coast, but Areno admits it is not easy to convince city and university leaders to go along with the unorthodox idea.
"The city will probably not develop that (plan), but to me it's a worthwhile endeavor to look into that possibility, because we're going to have these problems (with water supply) anyway," Areno said.
As environmentally conscious as the recycling plan might be, it would also be expensive. Areno estimates the initial costs to jumpstart the effort would come close to $500,000. Greywater recycling isn't designed to save money, Areno says, but to save water and help protect the fragile resources that provide clean water to the city and its residents.
Both Patterson and Areno agree that, no matter what form it takes, change must happen in order to keep Jacksonville's water flowing smoothly in the coming decades. It's an assessment driven home by the growth in population the city and county have seen in recent years.
Anniston and Oxford get their water from massive Coldwater Spring, located in the far southern part of Calhoun County. Coldwater's discharge-the amount of water it produces-totals some 32 million gallons per day, more than enough for the current populations of the cities it serves. It also makes Anniston more willing to share water with other towns, Patterson says.
As both Jacksonville and Anniston grow, the cities' demands for water will go up as well. It could hurt the water-sharing agreement currently in place and could send both municipalities in search of new resources and infrastructure to support the increased burden. For the time being, it seems Anniston is satisfied with the Jacksonville sharing arrangement, including the plan to extend the 12-inch tie-in through downtown.
"There's been some issues on (how to share the water), but we've talked about it, and they seem very receptive to it," Patterson said.
Jacksonville's water supply is not in imminent danger. You'll still wake up tomorrow with H2O flowing from the taps. But that's exactly why Patterson, Areno and others are looking not the present, but to the future, to determine Jacksonville's water needs. More growth in the city and the university means more thirsty people, more cars to be washed, more showers to be taken and more lawns to be watered.
It also means the city, county and university will have to work harder to ensure there comes no day when there's not a drop to drink.
Brandon Hollingsworth is the news editor of The Chanticleer. He can be reached at (256) 782-8521 or at chantynews@gmail.com. You can read his weekly science blog at brandononscience.blogspot.com.
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