Bay City Council approved a contract with Garver, LLC for an arsenic removal study on a closed water well that is not being used by the city for its water supply.

Council also discussed the possible installation of a temporary filter to lower arsenic levels at the Avenue I water plant to avoid fines from TCEQ but held off making a decision on that until further information can be obtained from TCEQ.

“I’m not opposed to the installation of a temporary filter but I want more answers from TCEQ,” said Position 3 Councilman Brad Westmoreland. “With more answers from TCEQ, I will then be willing to move forward.”

Westmoreland said he wants to know if TCEQ is aware that the city is no longer being used by the city once issues came up with arsenic levels being too high.

“This is a water well that is locked and not be used by the city,” Westmoreland said. “I was just questioning if TCEQ would grant us a variance for additional time to address the situation and not fine us at this time.”

City of Bay City’s Public Works Director Barry Calhoun said the city is currently working with TCEQ on this situation.

“We have reached out to TCEQ over how much the fines would be but I am not expected a response from them until next week. This well is currently offline and not being used in our distribution system. When we first found out of the issue, we removed the well from our distribution system,” Calhoun said.

Calhoun said in 2012, this was an issue cited in this plant. There was a blending system in place at that time but unfortunately the blending system did not resolve the problem.

“Today, we have high arsenic levels that exceed our permit limits and because of that the city has received TCEQ violations and we are threatened to be fined at this point,” Calhoun said. “We are one point away from being fined.”

Calhoun said the temporary arsenic removal mobile unit is designed to remove arsenic from the water so that it is acceptable to TCEQ.

“It is designed to be in place for 12 months and in this time we will determine where this arsenic is coming from, what is the source and what can we do to remedy the situation,” Calhoun said.

Bay City Manager Shawna Burkhart informed council that the “current cost for the temporary fix is part of our current budget. Instillation plus three months of operation in in our current budget. The rest will be in next year’s budget.”

Council did approve Garner, LLC for the arsenic removal study on this issue.

Garver visited the Bay City 6th Street & Avenue I WTP in response to an arsenic maximum contaminant level (MCL) violation for this facility. Compliance with the Arsenic Rule requires maintenance of arsenic levels below the maximum contaminant level (MCL) at all entry points to the distribution system on a running annual average basis.

Arsenic levels can be controlled by blending source waters prior to the entry point, implementing arsenic removal processes at individual wells, or in a centralized treatment facility.

The well at 6th Street & Avenue I is currently not in production due to the arsenic MCL exceedance. During a previous arsenic exceedance, the city implemented a blending plan to blend water from the water plants prior to entry point to the distribution system.

Generally, blending is a preferred alternative to arsenic removal treatment. However, blending was not found to be effective during this latest violation due to the generally elevated arsenic concentrations occurring at other facilities (while still below the MCL), resulting in higher arsenic concentrations overall in the distribution system water.

There are a total of six production wells for the city. Two of the wells are located on one site and the other wells are located individually and distributed across the system.

Currently, the only treatment performed at the existing water plants is free chlorine application and polyphosphate dosing as an iron sequestering agent.

Garver will analyze up to three permanent arsenic treatment system alternatives during its evaluation of the situation. The treatment alternatives will be evaluated for location at individual water treatment plant sites, as appropriate, and also as a centralized treatment facility.

For a centralized treatment system, Garver will identify and review available sites with city staff with anticipation that chlorinated water will be available to be pumped from applicable water treatment plant sites to the centralized facility location.

Permanent arsenic treatment alternatives are expected to comprise:

a. Iron Adsorption Media Vessel

b. Ion Exchange

c. Reverse Osmosis

A cost comparison will be performed for each treatment alternative and for comparison of individual treatment sites and a centralized facility to support a recommendation.

Iron Adsorption Media Vessel: Perform 3rd Party Raw Water Testing a. Garver will engage a third party (previously worked with) to perform Rapid Small Scale Column Tests (RSSCT) on Bay City’s raw water to help ascertain optimal iron adsorption vessel media usage.

The RSSCT will be performed with two different adsorbent media types to assess arsenic breakthrough profiles (e.g. media life assessment) and the effects of pre-treatment. Test will be performed using Bayoxide E33 and Granular Ferric Hydroxide (GFH). Tests typically require collection of two 55-gallon drums of raw water to be shipped to testing facility.

Garver will provide an ion exchange vendor with requisite water quality parameters so the vendor can perform intrinsic water quality modeling to help with optimal media selection for the given well site(s).