Emporia city leaders respond to ongoing water problems with potential solution

EMPORIA (KSNT) - As we reported Monday, Emporia went under a water warning due to yet another water main break. The city tells 27 News a big reason for all these breaks is a maintenance project on the water tower on East 12th Street.

With the tower down, water is being pushed to other towers much further away. The fluctuating pressure is putting a strain on the water mains and causing many to break. This is something the city did not anticipate to happen when they started this project.

"We had discussions when this project initially came up," Emporia City Manager Trey Cocking said. "We met with our water model, they modeled it, it looked like we weren't going to have any problems. Having that water tower offline, how it impacts it, you know sometimes you can have the best model in the world but when you get into real life, things work out a little different than they do on a computer screen."

After the water warning went into effect, city leaders spent much of their Monday night and Tuesday morning in meetings discussing how they can resolve this problem while the tower is being worked on.

"[We're going to] open up a bunch of water hydrants on the northwest section of town," Cocking said. "The water model shows this should relieve some of the pressure on the system and hopefully bring down the number of leaks that are occurring."

While the city has a plan in place, there's also more good news when it comes to water in Emporia. That's because all is well at the city's water plant.

"Even though we had the breaks at the water plants, everything was absolutely normal," Utility Plants Manager Jack Mason said. "We maintained pressures throughout the system and flows so that we could sustain the compliance standards that are required by KDHE, so actually everything was going just fine."

If push comes to shove, the city says its water plant is prepared.

"The plant is rated for 15 million gallons per day," Mason said. "We never actually exceeded 13, so we had wiggle room in there still. In an emergency situation, we actually have the capability of pumping 20."

While Emporia is no longer under a water warning they are under a water watch. This means much like a tornado watch, while nothing is happening at the very moment, they want residents to be aware of what is going on.