STARKVILLE — A jar filled with water sits on a table. Though a thin layer of sediment is settled at the bottom, the rested water is perfectly clean and potable.
Shake that jar and the sediment mixes in, making the water ugly and brown, though just as safe to drink as before.
“It’s perfectly safe,” Starkville Utilities Department General Manager Edward Kemp said. “It’s just unsightly.”
The jar example is essentially how brown water makes it into sinks and bathtubs — a disruption in the main line causes naturally occurring sediment to mix in the water — and its unsightliness and frequency are leading to a sharp uptick in citizen complaints, Kemp said. SUD fielded 58 brown water complaints in just the last quarter of 2022, according to records Kemp provided The Dispatch.
Water main breaks that need repaired, and even instances when firefighters tap into a hydrant to douse a burning structure, can cause brown water, Kemp said. But in public statements to the board of aldermen and in an interview with The Dispatch, he said he believes most of the complaints stem from contractors tampering with fire hydrants.
As part of an overall effort to reduce brown water issues, the city plans to make it clearly illegal for non-city personnel to use fire hydrants and establish penalties for anyone else caught tampering with them.
Aldermen held its first of two public hearings Jan. 17 on changing the municipal code to include those specifications. The board will hold the second public hearing and vote on the change Feb. 7. Penalty amounts will be established after the code change is approved, Mayor Lynn Spruill said.
“The existing code is ambiguous on this issue,” Spruill said. “(Once this passes) we’ll have a good, strong way to say, ‘This is what we’re doing.’
“We’re also giving away water (to these contractors),” she added. “The government is not allowed to give away things for free, so we need to get a handle on that.”
Kemp, while he didn’t name any specific company, said certain projects require large amounts of water, and there are cases when contractors tap into fire hydrants near work sites to fill up portable water tanks. That disrupts the sediment in the water main and causes instances of brown water for nearby users.
“There’s a loss of water, and there’s a value there, but there’s also a value of the public complaints,” Kemp said. “Both of those we’re trying to mitigate as much as we can.”
Within the next 30 to 45 days, Kemp said, SUD will establish a fee-based, easily accessible filling station for contractors to fill their water tanks at its operations center near the intersection of Highway 182 and Highway 12. Contractors can refill tanks for $25 on weekdays and $65 on weekends and holidays.
“Water is necessary for lots of types of construction, whether it be underground boring contractors or maybe site contractors that need it for soil conditions and preparations,” Kemp said. “We’re trying to make it very easy at an accessible location where they can come fill up these water tanks at a very minimal cost. … We want contractors to understand the importance of utilizing that as opposed to going and exercising our valves and hydrants on their own.”
SUD has offered this service in some form for years, moving it to the operations center in 2022, chief water operator Sean Johnston said.
The utility fills about five water tanks per day for contractors from a basic hydrant on site, charging based on water usage. But the new filling station will provide easier access behind the building, along with the flat fee.
Kemp said SUD will soon start a campaign to inform contractors about the code change and the process for using the filling station.
It’s been a few years since C Spire has done any major underground boring work in Starkville, Chief Network Officer Alan Jones said. But in cases where rules are changing, he said the company and its subcontractors rely on local governments to clearly communicate those changes.
Still, he said, the city’s pending code change, as well as its central refilling station, “make sense.”
“I would be surprised to hear anyone complain about that,” Jones said.
Other ways SUD is combatting brown water are flushing sediment from the main lines annually, an effort Kemp said would begin mid-February this year.
Anyone experiencing brown water is encouraged to call SUD at (662) 323-3133 or email [email protected].
“Not one thing is going to solve it,” Kemp said. “But I hope through our continued efforts in these different ways, we’ll continue to see less and less.”
Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.
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