STARKVILLE — The city of Starkville is continuing to grow, and now a water association in Oktibbeha County is expanding to meet the demand.
The Oktoc Water Association, which serves more than 700 customers just south of Starkville, is undergoing a systemwide overhaul to double its capacity.
With more and more housing developments springing up along South Montgomery Street and other areas south of the city, Oktoc Water Association President William Randle said the upgrades are necessary.
“The part of the county we serve has just grown so much,” Randle said. “We exceeded the (water) supply we had.”
A new, 300,000-gallon water tower is being constructed on Poorhouse Road, along with a new, 250-gallon-per-minute well. The Water Association also has installed and replaced pipes, upgraded its computer systems and improved existing wells, among other things.
The tower, which has been under construction since late winter, is ready to be painted, but it will be at least two or three months before the facility is fully operational, Randle said.
The improvements were necessary because the state Department of Health has a formula, which takes into consideration the number of gallons a water association can pump out with existing wells and its storage capacity, among other factors, and the Oktoc Water Association was at the point where it would have to stop taking on new customers, said Cliff Russell of the U.S. Department of Agriculture”s rural development office.
“They got to the point where they couldn”t add any more new users because they were at their limit,” Russell said.
The Oktoc Water Association received some funding for the roughly $1.8 million project from USDA.
“We were real fortunate that we were able to receive a (USDA) rural development grant for part of this, so that way our customers don”t have to bear the entire expense,” Randle said. “We had to increase our rates some, but it”s actually pretty minimal for what we got. That grant will help us, but we were also able to put back some reserve funds over the years that we”re applying to this.”
Randle said customers can expect a 10-15 percent rate increase in coming months to help pay for the improvements.
“We hope this would be a long-term upgrade for our system and we won”t have to do this again,” Randle said.
Part of the project includes two power generators for the new well at the Poorhouse Road facility. The generators will help the Power Association avoid a situation like Hurricane Katrina, when power was off for days and wells couldn”t pump water without electricity.
“When Hurricane Katrina came through, the power was out for what — six, seven, eight days? And all they had was that one water tank,” Russell said. “The wells can”t even run if you don”t have any electricity, so once that one tank is out of water, the whole system is out of water. With this project, we got the generators to go with the well so when power goes out, they”ll have a back-up source of power and they won”t have to worry about running out of water.”
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