Pilot studies and testing underway at village wells; village considering third well if filtration work at wells removes copper

By Dan McClelland

The firm the village hired to test a method to remove copper and manganese from the water produced by the one well in operation at the Pitchfork Pond site is doing its work this week. The firm was expected to arrive in town to start its work late last month, Mark Robillard, water and waste water told the village board at its July 21 meeting.

The pilot firm is expected to be here for a number of days and Mr. Robillard said members of his crew familiar with the well pumping operations will be assisting the test crew.

The filtration work on the wells is under the direction of the village’s new water consultants, Wright-Pierce.

This week Mayor Mary Fontana said the testing work, involving a special filtering process, has been producing some good results in recent days. She said while it is not as crystal clear as the well water drawn from the wells before it is chlorinated, but almost as clear and certainly much better than the light brown water the No. 1 well has been producing for over a year.

Mr. Robillard said they will be cleaning and starting to pump out of the second well at Pitchfork which hasn’t been used much, since the wells were installed over six years ago. The second well too will be included in the firm’s filtering and testing work to remove any copper or manganese found there.

The improvement work is planned in anticipation of the village bringing back in the well drilling firm it has used in the past, to find a site for a third well.

That evening the board approved the hiring of HydroSource Associates PC to use its hydrogeologic abilities to find the best site in town for a third well.

It is believed a third well, coupled with the existing two, will provide enough underground water to eventually mothball the water drawn from Little Simond which is processed at the village’s Lake Simond Road filtration and chlorination plant. The old plant at Moody was mothballed over a decade ago. It is the Little Simond source which is causing the village to continuously fail to meet the state Department of Health safe drinking water standards, because it is the water drawn from Little Simond, when treated with chlorine causes unhealthy compounds, thought to be linked to cancer. Those toxins are created when chlorine reacts with high amount of organic compounds in the lake’s water.

Bringing well No. 2 into operation is a pre-requisite of digging another well and so that testing can be done on that well too, according to Mr. Robillard.

Prompted by a question from Trustee Eric Shaheen, the department head said both wells will be used in the company’s pilot work that is studying the best way to filter out the copper and manganese. The testing firm was due to be in town by July 28 to begin its work.

“We’re going to be running both well No. 1 and 2 through the pilot testing and then monitor the quality of water coming out of them,” he told the board at its July meeting.

Mayor Fontana said the company had a cancellation, so could come here earlier than expected to do its research work.

Electric Superintendent Mike Dominie saw the arrival of a new well with this imperative: “It’s not an alternative; it’s a necessity!”

Developing a greater source of ground water from the wells is less expensive than developing state of the art filtration plants at the Lake Simond Road plant, or even the original main water source site at Moody, village officials have said in recent months. The state health department has also pushed the village to use groundwater instead of surface water like found in the two local lakes, and that led to the well development a half dozen years ago. “If we switch exclusively to ground water, the third well is necessary” to provide the required supply of water the village system needs, Mayor Fontana said.

Village-wide, water use is about 750,000 gallons per day.