By T. Scott Boatright
GRAMBLING — It was a watery mix of good and bad news Thursday night as the Grambling City Council held its May meeting at City Hall.
But the good overwhelmed the bad when Grambling Public Works Director Eric Caldwell told the Council that the city had received a water rating grade of “A.”
Two years ago the city had a water rating of “B,” but that fell to a “C” last year, so news of the turnaround quenched Mayor Alvin Bradley and the City Council’s thirst for good news about the city’s water supply.
“In 2022 our water grade was a B,” Caldwell told the Council and those attending the meeting. “In 2023 our grade was a C. But I’m here to tell you that for 2024, we got a grade of an A.
“For those who don’t know the full details, they look at infrastructure, they look at water quality, they look at finances, and we surpassed in every category. So for us to get a 96 A from a C, I’m happy. So for the citizens who feel that Grambling’s water is not good, the state of Louisiana is letting us know that Grambling has some of the best water here in Lincoln Parish.”
Caldwell said that A grade will hopefully bring in future funding to continue upgrading the city’s water service.
“I just got the news about the A today,” Bradley said. “I was just hoping for an improvement because we could have been even worse the last time we were graded and got the C. But we did get that C last year, and this A is a great improvement.
“Through our new Public Works Director (Caldwell), we were able to get the information in on time, in a timely manner. So we’re making progress. I’ll take that A every time.”
It was city engineering consultant Henry Shuler that presented a mix of good and bad as far as news concerning Grambling’s water. But even the good news he presented outweighed the bad he had to present.
“The water project is the one where we cut in roughly 80-90 valves (to water lines) across the city and we replace around 700 of the city’s meters,” Shuler said. “The update tonight is that everything is ready to go except one item — the physical meter itself. That’s the only thing that hasn’t arrived from the vendor. Everything else is actually staged at the sewer plant now.
“You have endpoints that read the meter. The end points are in but the meters are not. They should be in within a couple of weeks So right now Benchmark is projecting the start of the physical work of the first week of June. It has not been established yet what part of the city (Benchmark will be the work in), but they won’t be able to jump around.”
Shuler said that two crews will be working to install the meters and that if a meter is skipped in an area being worked on, residents should not be concerned.
“Don’t panic or start raising sand about it,” Shuler said. “If they skip a house, it just means there was something wrong that we’ll have to go back and deal with. One example of that might be the customer side service, the city doesn’t have anything to do with that, and it might be in bad condition. So they might not cut the service valve in as soon as they do the meter, but it will get done. It is in the contract for them to do that.
“The other thing we’ve talked about is lead service line inventory (determining and identifying the location of lead service lines. They will do that as they go. They have to dig up the line before the meter and after the meter, and then provide us with documentation of what they found — what material and size it is — and obviously what condition it’s in. To be very clear, this process does not replace the customer side service line (past a water meter toward a house).”
Shuler said that if it is determined that a pipe past a meter does contain problematic material, heaven forbid lead, then the project will not remedy that situation but only identify it.
“Then we’ll have to go back in and address it,” Shuler said. “Knock on wood, but we may not find any (pipes containing lead). The age of the city tells me it’s unlikely that we do, because most of the time that we’ve found (lead) it’s in really, really old pipes, and I don’t think we’ll find many if any at all.”
Shuler said his bad news involves the valve cut-in process.
“There will be disturbances to (water) services,” Shuler said. “We’re going to go through systematically, but it might require a systemwide shutdown, turning the water off to cut in those critical valves.
“But once the new valves are in place, we shouldn’t have to face (wide area shutdowns) again.”
Shuler said Benchmark will try to provide the city and its residents at least a few days of public notice before having to cut the water supply to cut in the new valves.
“This is pain that will eventually be a better thing,” Shuler said. “So that way, once we have these new valves in, valves you don’t have at all right now, if there’s another leak in the future or any kind of maintenance of any kind, instead of shutting the whole system down, we can isolate it to one block at a time.
“So, I promise this is for the greater good. But it’s going to be painful to get there.”
At Shuler’s request, the City Council approved a change order for lift station/sewer improvement costs due to the changes costing more than the prior work order, but that there was still some good news surrounding that.
“This change will put the project right at $3 million, but that project was originally budgeted at $3.2 (million),” Shuler said. “So even with the (problems and obstacles) we’ve faced, we’re still $200,000 under budget.
“So there will be surplus ARPA funds for the city that will be able to be rolled over to the meter replacement project. This is the final change order, so I’m relieved.”
But Shuler did have to present a little more negative news to end his report.
“We had one repair on a sewer line on Webster (Street), and the contractor was there today making that repair. That line was 20-feet deep. We ran a camera through that line and it was mostly collapsed. I really don’t know how sewage was flowing through it after seeing the video.
“So, when they started working on it this afternoon, it was so sandy that it completely collapsed. So we’re in emergency mode now. We do have a sewer back-up issue. Workers are on their way here now from Farmerville with a bypass pump. It is being treated as an emergency situation and they are going to bypass where that one repair is.”
