Greener lawns may have contributed to nastier water in Western Springs.
An autumn with little rain caused much more lawn sprinkling than normal and had the village pumping nearly 1 1/2 times what it normally sends through its water pipes, according to village manager Patrick Higgins. With the village main well out of a commission for repairs this fall, a shallow well was bought online and that was when problems began.
“It was a dry fall and sprinkling increased significantly and there was some loss of water not accounted for,” Higgins said. “We were pumping 40 percent more per month than earlier in the year.”
Once the village’s Well No. 3 was taken off-line for maintenance this fall that meant Well No. 1, a shallow well drilled in 1924, was used for the village water supply. The well, although meeting federal standards for drinking water, does produce water having more hardness and higher iron levels, officials noted.
Tapping more into that well due to the increased demand added to problems, village officials said.
Residents noticed and began complaining in the second week of October about the color and quality of their water.
The village has a number of alternatives planned, including digging a new deep well, to try to avoid such problems occurring when future well maintenance is done, but “it is not going to happen overnight,” Village President William Rodeghier said of potential solutions.
“But there has got to be a better solution,” Rodeghier said. “We can have our Public Works Committee arrive at answers and ways to implement solutions.”
Higgins noted that from the point of site approval, it will take a year to get a new well drilled and operational. The village will also conduct testing to see if it can find leaks in the current system causing the unaccounted for water loss.
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The village will also examine implementing an expedited system of rehabilitating water pipes. Currently, 50 20-foot sections of pipe are taken to an outside firm to be cleaned, taking six to seven weeks to get a well back online. By spending $60,000 to $70,000 to have additional piping on hand, the village could have a well back online within a week, Higgins said.
Western Springs will also look at having an additional motor in storage so that it can be changed out when another pump motor goes down. Village officials will also look at the feasibility of funneling water from Well 1 to the village water treatment plant to help improve its quality.
Matthew Supert, director of municipal services, said that distance from the plant and the hardness of the Well 1 water could be an issue and that is why water from the well “can’t go through the pre-treatment system.”
While Well No. 3 has been back online since early December, water from Well No. 1 is still working its way through the village’s water system and “still some residents could see discolored water in their homes,” Rodeghier warned.
He hoped that water from well No. 1 would be out of the village system by the end of the year.
The village has established a web page, www.wsprings.com/water providing a history of the village water system and updates on water testing.
Supert said testing will be done in homes throughout the village over the next two weeks to gauge water quality in different subdivisions.
Kevin Beese is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.