Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 15, 1994 TAG: 9402150219
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: STEPHEN FOSTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Medium
For most of Friday and Saturday, the pumps were silent.
"There was nothing we could do, except watch our water go down," Jerry Higgins, the plant's manager, said Monday. For more than 40 hours, "it was very frustrating."
In Blacksburg, residents' faucets began running dry as the town used up almost 5 million gallons of water stored in tanks. Drinking water - not to mention showers, or the ability to flush toilets - became scarce. Many jumped at the chance to get potable water trucked in by milk tankers from Radford.
The problem was smaller than your thumb.
It took Bob Kilgore, Appalachian Power Co. division manager, to spot it.
Earlier Saturday, electric company work crews had restored service to the authority's Blacksburg pumping station, said Joe Weddle, Apco division superintendent. But the main plant had just enough electricity for heat and lights, and not enough to power the pumps.
Around 5 p.m., Kilgore visited the plant, took a stroll down Virginia 114, and found the problem: a wire atop a pole about 100 yards from the plant had burned through. A gap of about an inch was preventing full power from reaching the big pumps.
"I got lucky," Kilgore said. "There wasn't any visible damage, unless you looked very closely."
Considering the damage last week's ice storm wrought, and the minuscule size of the trouble spot, Higgins doesn't fault the power company. And, "from our standpoint, what we could do was done to the ultimate."
But whenever a community runs out of water because there's no power to pump it, a problem needs to be addressed, he said.
Three years ago, in the wake of Hurricane Hugo, the authority discussed buying generators. Hugo had knocked out power to the plant for 14 hours.
But the authority decided generators weren't needed, Higgins said.
Apco told the authority that prolonged outages to the water service were rare. The power company placed the water utility's needs in its highest tier of priorities. Three nearby electric substations, including one that was to be built soon along Virginia 114, meant that if power did go out to the authority, it would be restored quickly.
"They made their decision not to buy generation based on the odds," Weddle said. Apco has versatility in its ability to switch circuits, but "this storm was of such magnitude that we had virtually every circuit in trouble.
"The chances of it happening again are pretty slim," he said.
The authority's decision not to buy generators was reasonable, Higgins said. Cost was not a factor. He estimates it would take $250,000 to outfit the plant and one or more pumping stations with generators.
Now comes a February ice storm that turns trees into splinters, coats the land in an inch of ice and knocks out power to tens of thousands. The generator issue?
"Obviously, it's going to come up again," said Higgins.
John Lemley, Christiansburg's town manager and vice chairman of the authority board, said he wasn't sure if the issue would be formally placed on the board's agenda.
"I imagine it'll come up," he said.
For the most part, Christiansburg was spared Blacksburg's problems, Lemley said.
For Blacksburg officials and Higgins, once power went down Friday, they watched a crisis creeping up but were helpless to combat it. Until Wednesday, when contamination tests will be completed, the town recommends boiling water for 10 minutes.
Higgins said he baby-sat a pumping station outside Blacksburg on Saturday morning, which had regained power but would be useless once the water drained from tanks that the main water plant supplied. He told power company officials that if they could figure out the problem by noon, the water service would be all right.
But midday came and went, and "once we passed noon, it was a critical time," he said. Finally, Kilgore made his discovery.
"It took about 10 minutes to repair,' said Higgins.
The plant came back to life, Higgins said. Then around 10 p.m., power went down again. This time, it turns out, a line near the plant's raw water pumping station on the New River was the culprit. Around 1 a.m. Sunday, power was restored for good, Higgins said.
Higgins said of the ordeal:
"We were convinced from the start that we would not run out of water. People are not supposed to run out of water."
by CNB