The Upland City Council held a town hall meeting to address recent water issues Oct. 29.
The town hall meeting followed an increase in confusion and frustration over a series of water concerns including boil orders, high water bills, hard water and discolored water.
Approximately 20 community members attended the meeting, with others joining on the Facebook livestream. The gathering heard from Jonathan Perez, Upland town manager, Jeremy Hardy, representing Commonwealth Engineers and Brad Felver, Upland Utility superintendent.
Discussion revolved around the state of Upland’s water infrastructure, the water quality testing process, the town’s water fund and what the community can expect moving forward.
Much of the town’s water issues stem from aging infrastructure. A consequence of this has been the water main breaks that have occurred in the past year.
“What’s occurring is, because of the age, all of a sudden, within the system you have an influx of water in one direction and a whole pipe that has a soft area, and then obviously you get a main break,” Hardy said.
These main breaks cause low water pressure. When a water main drops below 20 pounds per square inch (psi), bacteria is able to grow in those mains, creating the potential for dangerous water, said Felver.
Because of the recent main breaks, and resulting low water pressure, the town has called several boil orders. Recent orders were issued on Sept. 16, Oct. 8 and Oct. 25, according to the Chronicle-Tribune. The most recent boil order was lifted on Oct. 30 with exceptions for a few addresses.
Hardy also said a new lead-copper rule was put in place that requires the town to do an inventory of all underground pipes that connect homes to the city’s main supply, also known as service lines. If any of these pipes are made of lead, known as lead service lines, the town is required to notify the residents living in the connecting homes, Hardy said, as they could pose a danger to the water quality.
Upland Utilities has taken inventory, and found 600 of the 921 services have “lead service.” It is Upland Utilities’ responsibility to replace these lead service lines over the next 10 years, in compliance with the new rule.
Therefore, new infrastructure is needed to replace these service lines as well as the outdated pipes that are leading to main breaks. The town hopes to secure funding for these projects, but they need to have an asset-management plan first. Later down the road, the town will need a plan outlining how they plan to respond to the complex issue.
“Ultimately it comes back to the plan,” Hardy said. “What’s the low-hanging fruit? … We want to make sure we tack the worst of the worst so we get the best bang for our buck. It does take time; it’s not like an overnight venture.”
State and tax funds are not to be used to cover these utilities costs, Mary Fletcher, Upland clerk treasurer, said. The Indiana State Board of Accounts wants to see that a town’s utilities can function independently.
So far, the town has had to seek outside funding and grants to execute projects and has been successful in doing so, Perez said.
Nonetheless, it was important to grow their town water funds, Fletcher said. When she transitioned into her position, Upland's water funds were and still are in the negatives.
The State Board of Accounts wrote up Upland for being in the negatives for the past three years. If a town’s funds remain in the negatives for too many years, the state is allowed to take over that town’s utilities and set rates as they see fit.
In order to prevent this, the council decided to raise rates back in March in hopes of growing the fund and eventually getting it out of the negatives. They also passed an ordinance that would allow them to potentially raise rates by 3% every year.
“It is a way to add protection so we don't have any major (rate increases) in the future,” Fletcher said. “We are not in it to make profit, but we definitely need the funds to do these infrastructure repairs.”
As Upland community members grapple with questions regarding the timeline of repairs, how future growth will affect the water system and what infrastructure will look like in the future, town leadership said they are doing their best but are still in the early stages of what will be a complex process.
“It’s frustrating for all of us, and we wish we could snap our fingers and just have a whole, complete, new infrastructure overnight,” Council President Shawn Sizemore said. “But unfortunately we can’t. So like (Hardy) said, we have to pick the worst of the worst first to get it fixed.”
For more information discussed in the town hall meeting, visit the Town of Upland’s Facebook page where the meeting livestream was uploaded.
