– Bids should be sought this month for the drilling of a new water well for the St. Martin Parish Consolidated Water District No. 4, the board for the new district heard at its final meeting of the year this past Tuesday.
Pam Granger of McBade Engineers and Consultants, whose firm will oversee the new water well project, told the board that plans are for the awarding of the bid to take place in January.
Parish President Pete Delcambre told the board that the signing of the lease for property where the well will be located was completed and the servitude rights are being negotiated for right-of-way for transmission of the water from the well to the main line tying into the CALL TODAY.
City of St. Martinville water system, which is one of three that is being combined into the consolidated district.
The board also decided to move its December meeting date to January 27 because the December date would fall on Dec. 23, only two days before Christmas, when many board members might not be available to attend the meeting.
The board also heard from engineers for McBade and Sellers and Associates about the status of projects being done under contract for the water district.
Jeremy Fontenot of McBade Engineers told the board that plans for installing new water meters throughout the district have changed, with the first wave now being installed in the city of St. Martinville instead
™ of in the Catahoula area as previously planned.
Water
The first set of about 100 meters, which will tie in to a new billing software system for the consolidated water district, were installed the previous week, Fontenot said.
Fontenot also said that work on the elevated water tank on Denbas Street in St. Martinville is finished and should be back in service shortly as soon as state approval is given.
Work also continues in finding valves to isolate sections of the city if there is a break in a line somewhere or if work is being done somewhere in the water system. Those valves also are checked to see if they are in working order, allowing service to continue in other parts of the city and in the Catahoula and St. Martin Industrial Park areas while work is being done on the isolated areas.
Sonnier told the board that the work on the Industrial Park office upgrade is about 27 percent complete. The main line has been installed in most of Catahoula and LeBlanc Subdivision.
Ronald Daigle, manager of the St. Martin Water District No. 4 system (the Catahoula system and surrounding areas), told the board that water flow to the sugar mill has decreased from a peak of around 750,000 gallons a day to around 350,000 gallons a day, about a 50 percent decrease in the water being used.
The system also dealt with a slight increase in arsenic levels in the water, which has since been lowered, but resulted in notifications being sent to customers, though the levels were not dangerous.
Daigle also let the board know that once the consolidation process is completed, the treatment system for St. Martin Water District 4 will be taken offline and not used again to treat water for the new consolidated system. All water treatment in the new system will be done in St. Martinville, as the state has required for the consolidation process.
Jonathan Vining, St. Martinville water supervisor, told the board that the leaks along two blocks of Main Street in St. Martinville have been fixed since the last board meeting.
He also explained that the isolation valves in the city allow for the water lines in the city to be isolated into roughly thirds.
Vining also said that the overflow basin beneath the Denbas Street water tower must be reconnected after the overflow line was moved from the center of the tower to one of the sides, on state orders.
If there is overflow, the basin allows the water to be captured and sent to the bayou instead of flooding the nearby area.
