About a year after an arctic blast wreaked havoc on the city of Jackson’s water system, leaders say they are better positioned to handle a similar water crisis this year.
In late December and early January, consecutive days of sub-freezing temperatures led to hundreds of water main breaks, leaving nearly 60,000 customers temporarily without water.
While forecasters with the National Weather Service say it’s too early to tell if Jackson will experience similar temperatures this year, the city’s public works department is taking no chances.
“We already have Hemphill, UCI and Delta on stand-by,” said Public Works Director Robert Miller. “Last year, we had to improvise solutions. We did not have unit price contracts in place. We did not have methods for tracking statistics. All the communication we had with the media was improvised. We have plans in place for dealing with all of that.”
Last year, Hemphill Construction, Utility Constructors (UCI) and Delta Constructors were brought on to help patch lines. This year, the firms already have standing contracts, and set prices for doing the same work.
Miller said the city also said improvements at the O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Plant should help system maintain pressure even if there are a large number of breaks.
“We’ll make sure everything is up and running that needs to be up and running,” he said. “We have had some personnel changes (at the plant) as well. The new personnel are taking steps to be ready for this winter.”
Among upgrades, the city has replaced the plant’s pumps and water filtration equipment, increasing the plant’s capacity to treat water going into the system.
“We will have a greater ability to get higher volumes of water through the treatment plant,” he said.
Between January 1 and January 30, more than 300 main breaks were reported, after two major cold snaps ripped through the metro area.
In late December 2017, low temperatures dipped in the teens and 20s, leading to more than 100 main breaks. The city had just gotten a handle on those breaks when a similar snap came through in mid-January, leading to another 200 breaks.
The cold snaps were part of what turned out to be a very unstable winter cycle, according to National Weather Service Senior Forecaster Mike Edmonston.
“We had two snow events within a month’s time. on December 8, 2017, we had a snow event, but also a prolonged period of below-freezing temperatures. On January 16, we had snow,” Edmonston said. “On January 22, we had severe weather. We turned around two weeks later on February 7 and had a severe weather event.
“This could still happen, a week or two of above-normal temperatures or a week or two below normal,” he said. “It’s too early to tell how it’s going to pan out.”
With last year’s prolonged cold spells, the surface water and ground temperatures dropped, leading to the main failures.
“When water goes from 49 to 37 degrees, it changes the dynamic of how water behaves in the system,” Miller said. “Water expands as it gets close to freezing.”
The water’s expansion placed additional pressure on the city’s already weakened water infrastructure, which in some places is 60 to 100 years old.
“It’s like putting a Coke can in the freezer and having it bust,” Miller said.
With the breaks, hundreds of millions of gallons were lost and pressure for most water customers in Jackson and Byram.
While another cold spell could lead to additional breaks, the public works director said improvements at the Curtis plant could ensure that enough water is produced to make up for any losses and to maintain pressure.
