By Charles Romans
Carter County Times
The Olive Hill City Council met for its regularly scheduled meeting last Tuesday, May 21, with a number of items on the agenda, but the water treatment plant was the main topic of discussion. After approving minutes, with one councilmember abstaining from the vote due to an absence at the previous meeting, the first person to address the council was Gary Horner, with Trane, the company responsible for the city’s new water plant. The plant is expected to be active soon, and Horner gave the council updates on the process.
“We’ve got water in the lake, and we’ve been doing some testing,” Horner told the council. “The filter manufacturer came out and tested the production cycle, and was able to do a manual backwash.”
The system has an auto backwash system, but Horner said that in order to test that the plant would first need to be up and running. The next step, he said, was to do some chemical testing, but pretreatment would need to be completed first. The company is scheduled to be on site and address some tank issues first, then the pretreatment can be done after.
“We will need to do some disinfecting and tests,” Horner said. “But once we get that done we can get the treatment where it needs to be and (when) they decide there is suitable water in the clear well, we will have the engineer come out and get their reports.”
Horner said once these crucial steps were taken, then the city would need to send a certified letter to the state and hopefully the plant would be producing in the near future. Horner told council he is hopeful that all the steps will be completed by the end of the coming month.
“If things go smoothly, the plant will be in the position to produce water by the end of June,” Horner said.
“We’re replacing a plant that is 80 years old,” Mayor Jerry Callihan told the council. “You may not believe this, but the old plant makes perfect water,” Callihan said of the current system.
The new plant, however, will be better equipped to provide for the city going into the future. And to commemorate the new state of the art water system, Callihan said there will be a ribbon cutting ceremony which he and council will attend.
The council also read an abbreviated resolution concerning the Municipal Road Aid Cooperative Agreement. The resolution is an agreement between the Secretary of the Transportation Cabinet, the Commonwealth of Kentucky, the Department of Rural and Municipal Aid and the Legislative Body of the Incorporated City of Olive Hill, Kentucky.
The resolution concerned Kentucky Revised Statute (KRS) 177.365 (1) which provides that 7.7 percent of revenue resulting from the imposition of motor fuel taxes on taxpayers pursuant to KRS 138.220 (1) & (2), KRS 138.660 (1) & (2) and KRS 234.320 shall be set aside for the construction and reconstruction and maintenance of urban roads and streets and for no other purpose.
The resolution was voted on and passed by the council, before also voting to open bidding for blacktop projects. The concern, however, is that considering the low amount of funds approved for the city by the state, there will be no enticement for contractors to place the city projects on equal footing with other, more highly funded projects. Typically, Callihan mentioned, contractors have taken Olive Hill projects toward the end of the paving season, but last year that season ran until blacktop producers shut down for the year.
Currently there are not sufficient funds, even including funds left from the previous year, to complete all of Olive Hill’s paving requirements.
Contact the writer at charles@cartercountytimes.com