The Town of Many has been upgrading its water and sewer systems for the past two years with money received from the Federal Treasury Department’s ARPA funds. Last year, the electrical control system at the Town’s water treatment and distribution plant, was replaced with a stateof- the-art Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system. These systems are used for controlling, monitoring, and analyzing water plant processes and consists of both software and hardware components and enables remote and on-site gathering of data from the equipment.
At the water collection, treatment, and storage plant, the SCADA monitors and reports, in real time, all of the processes required to collect and produce fresh, clean water for the Town’s residents. Jeremy Koss, the longtime Water Plant Manager said, “We now have the ability to see, in real-time, how much water we have in our water system in town, and the water levels in the elevated tanks in Town. We can tell in an instant with a sudden drop in water pressure anywhere in the system, that we have water leak so we can find and correct it quickly. We can also diagnose if a pump is failing at our well sites due to all of the data provided.”
Koss went on to say that a new water intake pump was added at the plant because one had failed. “Using two alternating intake pumps makes sure that if one goes down, the other one is there to prevent the loss of water coming into the system,” Koss added.
“The ARPA dollars gave us a good jump-start on modernizing our water and sewer infrastructure systems. APRA definitely helped us get some critical projects accomplished in a short amount of time,” said Robert Hable, Jr., Many’s Mayor.
The ground storage tank at the water plant also got a complete make-over, inside and out. A new tank liner was installed and the roof trusses were cleaned and painted-all on the inside of the tank. The outside of the tank also got a fresh coat of paint. These measures help prolong the life of this vital asset in the water system. Other projects paid for with ARPA funds include a new booster pump and new water lines installed at one of the Town’s well sites; a wall built around chemicals used in the water and sewer systems; a new walkway and decking that leads to the water intake pumps at the lake, and engineering services for projects.
The Town, over the past two years, has also received about $123,000 in grants from the State’s Local Government Assistance Program (LGAP) and the Community Water Enrichment Fund ( CWEF). The funds from these programs allowed the town to afford an inspection of all of the fire hydrants on the water system with repairs and replacements where needed. The money was also used to help off-set the rehabilitation cost of the 150,000-gallon water storage tank at the water plant and for elevated and ground storage tank inspections throughout the town.
“All of the projects have been behind-thescenes as our infrastructure is mostly buried-water and sewer lines- and at the water and sewers plants, and more projects are planned so that we can continue providing services our residents rely upon,” added Hable.