SAN BENITO — The city’s water plant is showing its age and it’s impacting local residents and businesses.
The 90-year-old water plant’s age is partly to blame for a Sunday shutdown that led the city to warn residents to boil water before drinking it.
The water plant shut down just as officials work on a $3 million project to overhaul it.
“It’s an old plant that was supposed to be decommissioned,” Mayor Celeste Sanchez said yesterday. “We’ve had to do so much to that plant.”
Sanchez said the city has a three-step plan to revive the old plant.
“We’re making improvements to the plant to have a viable, sustainable water plant,” City Manager Manuel De La Rosa said.
As part of the plan’s first phase, the city bought a $165,000 triplex backwash pump system package, city spokeswoman Martha McClain has said.
Now, Sanchez said, the city’s entering the second phase of its plan.
The second phase includes an adjusted design plan, a supervisory control and data acquisition system, an automation control system and expanded chemical treatment containers, McClain said.
Officials plan to dip into a $12.6 million reserve account to fund the plant’s upgrade.
City commissioners decided to upgrade the old plant instead of buying water from the city of Harlingen, City Commissioner Esteban Rodriguez has said.
What happened to the new plant?
For years, the city had planned to phase-out and shut down the Stenger Street plant built in 1927.
In 2009, the city built a $17.9 million “state-of-the-art” water plant.
But about two years ago, the city turned to the old plant as its primary source of water after city commissioners shut down the new plant.
Officials will not reconsider their decision to shut down the new plant, De La Rosa said.
In 2014, city officials decided to shut down the plant after its membrane filtration system failed to properly operate.
At the time, Orlando Cruz, who had served as the city’s engineer since late 1980s, said he recommended the city replace membranes to continue to use the new plant, warning the old plant would fail.
“That’s exactly what I warned them two years ago was going to happen,” Cruz said yesterday. “They’re playing with fire.”
Cruz estimated it would cost less than $1 million to make the new plant operational.
In 2014, the city filed a lawsuit against companies behind the plant’s construction, arguing it never efficiently operated.
Companies named in the suit included Siemens Corp., U.S. Filter Wastewater Group Inc., Evoqua Water Technologies LLC, CSA Construction Inc.; and Cruz-Hogan Consultants Inc., for which Cruz serves as president.
City Attorney Ricardo Morado has said the city plans to resolve its lawsuit before putting the new plant into operation.
The lawsuit remains in mediation, awaiting a trial date, De La Rosa said.
