Abby water tower project presents unique challenge
The City of Abbotsford is resurfacing their treated water tower located on North Second Ave.
The tower serves as the only treated tower in the city and hasn’t been resurfaced since it was built in 1997. The scope of work being done to the tower will include sand blasting and repainting the outer shell of the tower. To sand blast the structure, crews will be placing a containment device around the tower to keep any dust or sand from getting into the air and potentially spreading throughout the city.
The project has presented the city and its emergency services with a unique challenge.
The water tower holds relay antennas for Clark County emergency services as well as a Central Fire and EMS District radio communication antenna. These antennas would be out of service if covered up by the containment device.
Central Fire and EMS battalion chief John Austin attended the meeting and said his concern is that the antenna would be taken down and that would cause a lapse in communication.
“I guess the bottom line is, we have a repeater tower up there that we use to talk amongst ourselves so we don’t have to go on the county’s channels,” Austin said. “We just can’t have that covered up. We need that antenna. It cannot be shut down at any given time.”
The Clark County antennas were also in danger of being out of service and City Administrator Josh Soyk said those towers are being raised up to ensure they would not be affected by the work being done to the tower.
“The last I heard, Clark County is looking into raising the antennas about six feet higher and then the containment system would be below the antennas and wouldn’t cover them up,” Soyk said. “I don’t know if that’s something we can do with yours.”
Austin said as long as the antenna doesn’t get shut down or interrupted, he is okay with whatever needs to be done to keep it in service.
Alderman Jeremiah Zeiset asked Austin if Central Fire and EMS could go on the county channel as long as the antenna was out of commission. Austin said the county doesn’t allow municipalities to do that in order to keep the channels from becoming too cluttered.
Soyk said Clark County will have to recalibrate their antenna when it is moved because it is a point-to-point antenna and needs a direct line of sight. Austin said their antenna shouldn’t have to worry about that. Soyk said with that being said, it would be easiest to move the antennas up Soyk said crews were supposed to begin work on the tower in the beginning of July but have been tied up with a previous project and have yet to start work. The project was originally scheduled to be completed in October of this year.
The other issue that was brought up with the resurfacing project was that if workers needed to work on the inside of the tower and had to drop the water out of the inside of the tower, then Central Fire and EMS would need to adjust their strategy for fighting fires in Abbotsford during that time.
Soyk said the tower would be empty for an unknown period of time and agreed to notify Central Fire personnel before that happens.
“You’ll still have the same water pressure,” Soyk said. “If you hook up to a hydrant, you probably wouldn’t notice a difference.”
“You probably don’t want us to pump a bunch of water that we really don’t have right,” Austin questioned.
“Preferably not,” Soyk said. “All the water plants have their own storage so it’s not like we have no storage when the water tower is down.”
In the event of a fire, Austin said Central Fire and EMS would initially use the fire hydrants until they could run tanker trucks to other areas to get water while the tower was empty to avoid causing a water shortage within the city.
Other business
_ Jenny Jochimsen of the Abbotsford Public Library asked if the city could look into providing additional direction from main roadways to the library. She said right now, there is only one sign that points drivers from Hwy. 13 to the direction of the library.
She said the current sign can be seen on the northbound side of Hwy. 13 but an additional sign could be placed on the sidewalk of the southbound section of the highway. She also said there is no sign on Spruce Street that points towards the library so drivers know to turn on Spruce Street but then are on their own when trying to find the library.
_ The council approved a bid of $6,000 put forth by James Orr Coating Inspection LLC to inspect a 118,700 gallon well and multiple tanks at the central water plant. This inspection is required to be done every five years by the Wisconsin DNR.
