No new water tower needed, officials learn

Email To A Friend
Printer Friendly
Comments

---

by Brent Hovey

Reporter

Aurora -- A new water storage facility will not be needed when Cleveland water comes to town next year.

Mayor Lynn McGill and other city officials met May 6 with Portage County officials and the engineers in charge of the Cleveland water project to update everyone on progress, review preliminary models and for Aurora to provide Portage County with additional information.

After reviewing preliminary plans, McGill said the city will not have to build a water tower near the border with Streetsboro, as originally thought.

"That would have been a considerable amount [of money] -- something over a million dollars," said McGill.

The engineers believe the city's current north and south tanks, combined with Cleveland's storage at Liberty Avenue and a backup water supply from Portage County will be adequate storage capacity.

A contract that had been worked on since 2002 was signed by Aurora City Council July 9, 2007, to approve water services with Portage County to recieve water from Cleveland.

For years, the local supply has come from Portage County wells in Shalersville Township, whose water has a higher hardness content than Cleveland.

Switching to Cleveland water will be a reduction in cost to residents, according to McGill.

McGill was joined by Service Director John Trew, city engineers Ross Brankatelli and Justin Czekaj and water department supervisor Edward Skonieczny.

THEY MET with Portage County Water Resources Director Harold Huff, Portage Engineer Jeff Lonzrick, CT Consultants and Bowen & Associates Engineers.

The city reviewed the hydraulic analysis work of Aurora's water distribution system done by CT Consultants.

Officials reviewed Bowen and Associates' design for a 16-inch express main and pump station to be constructed in Aurora.

Then the city gave Portage County engineers additional work to model.

That included pressures along the current 16-inch line on Route 43, location of the pump station near the north water tower and a water main extended into Bainbridge Township and looped to the Homestead subdivision.

"We're just sitting down with them and making sure their analysis of our system and pump station is current and how they're going to connect to our system," said McGill.

"We wanted to understand what they were doing and we gave them some extra information. The preliminary designs look promising."

McGill said everything is on schedule for Cleveland water to arrive in Aurora by early 2009.

E-mail: bhovey@recordpub.com

Phone: 330-688-0088 ext. 3115