THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, March 15, 1996 TAG: 9603130122
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ELIZABETH THIEL, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 53 lines
Residents won't taste the effects until 1998, but city officials ceremoniously broke ground Tuesday for a series of improvements to Chesapeake's water treatment plant.
The $66 million in improvements are designed to make city water, which is drawn from the Northwest River, cleaner and better-tasting.
``We are doing this to provide a better quality of water to our citizens,'' said Mayor William E. Ward, speaking to a crowd gathered for the occasion at the Northwest River Water Treatment Plant on South Battlefield Boulevard. ``Good, quality water is the lifeblood of any city.''
The plant serves about half the city's residents - the others get water from Norfolk and Portsmouth - and draws an average of about nine million gallons per day from the river. With the improvements, Chesapeake will have the capacity to generate as many as 10 million gallons of treated water per day.
Chesapeake water customers for years have suffered through bouts of salty drinking water, whenever low rainfall causes the river's supply to become more briney. Last summer, the water was barely potable even for mixtures like coffee and sodas.
The improvements to the treatment plant will change that, with a new reverse-osmosis filtering system that will strain out most of the brine. The leftover brine will be pumped into the Southern Branch of the Elizabeth River.
The new filtering system also will allow Chesapeake to meet new federal guidelines for safer drinking water, which call for better removal of the byproducts produced by the chemicals used to treat and clean raw water supplies.
``You get two cures for the price of one,'' said Amar Dwarkanath, the city's director of public utilities. ``Our customers got fortunate.''
Chesapeake residents in a November referendum voted to allow the city to issue bonds to pay for the project.
Construction already was under way Tuesday in a large field next to the existing water treatment plant, stopping only for the ceremonial kick-off.
Five engineering and two general contracting firms have signed on to help with the improvements: CH2M Hill Inc. of Denver, Colo., AES of Williamsburg, Kimley-Horn and Associates Inc. of Virginia Beach, Michael Baker Jr. Inc. of Virginia Beach, HDR Engineering Inc. of Virginia Beach, M.A. Mortenson Corp. of Minneapolis and Mid Eastern Builders Inc. of Chesapeake.
All the improvements are scheduled for completion by October 1998.
KEYWORDS: CHESAPEAKE WATER by CNB