Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 22, 1995 TAG: 9506220040
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAN CASEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
In 1991, Carvins Cove Reservoir held 6.5 billion gallons of water. Yet, at times, Wilford "Bill" Tennant couldn't get a drink from his kitchen tap.
Nor could he bathe. Or cook. Or wash clothes and dishes. At least, during the day in the summer.
Water pressure was so maddeningly low in Tennant's Southeast Roanoke home that he and his wife kept two gallon jugs full in their tub just in case a shower petered out unexpectedly.
"I learned to laugh about it," Nellie Tennant said. "It's no fun being caught in the shower with a head full of soap."
On Wednesday, the Tennants, some of their neighbors on Kefauver Road, an array of elected and appointed officials, city workers and business people gathered at the Carvins Cove Water Treatment Plant off Plantation Road to mark the completion of $31.5 million in water system improvements.
The ceremony included a toast of - what else? - Carvins Cove water, with lemon.
"This is the best dag-blasted water in America," Mayor David Bowers said after downing a mouthful from a plastic champagne glass.
After almost a decade of planning and 21/2 years of construction, Roanoke now boasts a water production capacity of 28 million gallons per day, up from 18 million gallons only a few years ago.
The increase will assure adequate water delivery to the city for the next 40 years, officials said.
The construction included 14 miles of new water mains, a series of new sedimentation pools, and the addition of state-certified chemical and bacteriological labs at the filtration plant. Also added was a 6million-gallon underground reservoir.
The city also added two storage tanks and a pumping station in the Southeast Roanoke area, where the most severe water pressure problems once were.
Gravity, which had been depended upon to send water from Carvins Cove to the treatment plant, was replaced with giant pumps. Filtration and monitoring systems now are computerized.
The money for the improvements comes out of the pockets of water users - 160,000 homeowners and businesses in the Roanoke Valley. To pay the construction costs, water rates were boosted 55 percent between 1991 and 1994.
"We do not take lightly spending $31 million dollars," the mayor said. "However, even with these increases, Roanoke still has the third-lowest water rates in the state and is competitive with surrounding localities."
After the ceremony, water plant employees led tours of the new facility.
Suffice it to say that making water drinkable involves pumping it from a big lake into the plant, where chemicals are added to remove dirt and kill bacteria. Then it passes though a series of gravel, sand and carbon filters before it's pumped into your home.
The entire process - from the time a gallon is pumped out of the reservoir until it reaches a home - can take days, waterworks operator Lloyd Paige said.
by CNB