Just shy of three months since a million gallons of Española city water were lost when a storage tank failed, that tank is fully repaired and will be back in the system by the end of the week.
Tank 2’s floor gave out in the small hours of July 13, spilling all of the water inside it down Industrial Park Road. The tank holds a million gallons of water. The city was on Stage 4 Water Conservation, its most stringent conservation measures, for a week in the wake of the accident. Stage 4 measures are enacted when a city’s ability to meet demand falls below 50 percent.
D&R Tank Company, the original builders of the tank, performed the repairs, which were completed Sept. 29, Acting City Manager Veronica Albin said. The project came in around $6,400 more than the original contracted amount of just over $168,000, and finished around four days later than the originally estimated 60-day completion date. The actual completion date was, however, within the extra cushion time given to D&R by contract. The extra cost was due to a change order to replace the tank’s ceiling rafter bolts, according to city documents.
The bolts keep the ceiling rafters in place and stable, Public Works Director Ben Ortega stated in a report to the Public Works Committee. The failure of the tank caused the roof to drop a little over a foot, warping the rafters. Fixing the problem put extra stress on the roof, making newer stronger bolts a something both D&R, and third-party engineer Wilson & Company recommended, according to city documents.
“The tank is repaired and filled and it should be back online as soon as we get bacteria test results (on the water),” she said. “That should be probably by the end of the week.”
Tank 2 is used to blend water from Wells 2 and 3 to bring them into compliance with federal Environmental Protection Agency standards for fluoride and arsenic, respectively. When the tank failed, the city had to obtain a temporary variance from the state to use arsenic-contaminated water from Well 3 to serve customers along Industrial Park Road.
A week after the failure, the city installed a bypass line to enable that blending to occur in the water sytem itself. At that point Well 2 was operational again, and the city lifted its Stage 4 restrictions. When Tank 2 is operational, the blending will once more take place in the tank.
As soon as Tank 2 is operational, Ortega said he plans to drain and fully inspect all of the city’s tanks, beginning with Tank 5.