Officials broke ground Thursday on a new water treatment plant in Bunker Hill, a much-needed replacement for the 66-year-old plant that services much of southern Berkeley County.
Located on Runnymeade Road, the old water plant will continue to run while the new one is being constructed. According to county officials, its aged equipment has run its course, and if something was to go wrong, they don’t know if they could find replacements.
Jim Ouellet, executive director with Berkeley County Public Service Water District, said the new water plant is part of his office’s effort to bring the county’s water systems into the future.
“It’s all about the future,” Ouellet said. “We are going to be building a facility that has the capacity to treat a lot more water than what the plant presently can treat now.”
He said the new plant is especially necessary with the growth the county has seen recently, citing the addition of 3.3 new metered connections to the water supply every day. Over the next three years, he said the county will have to supply the community with an additional 900,000 gallons of water.
This new plant is just one part of the effort to expand the county’s water infrastructure, along with a recently started expansion to the Potomac River Water Treatment Facility in northern Berkeley County.
“We’re expanding that, and we’re trying to do it in a very timely manner, so we can continue to meet the needs of all the folks that keep wanting to move to our community,” Ouellet said.
The new plant will have a treatment capacity of 6 million gallons per day, once source waters are brought to the plant. It will more than double water storage capacity — from 400,000 gallons to 2 million gallons.
It comes with a cost of $79 million, $3 million of which comes from a federal spending request from U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito. Capito attended the groundbreaking ceremony, saying the new plant is a showcase of how well Berkeley County’s government is working.
“What’s going on here is what the rest of West Virginia should look like, with involved county commissioners (and) water boards that have that future look to know how we can expand and provide services,” she said.
Capito said getting funds for projects like this one is a priority for her, with West Virginia having so many antiquated water systems. She also said that due to those antiquated water systems, many still using pipes made of terracotta or wood in some places, much of the water sent through some of them doesn’t get to its destination.
“If you don’t have the availability of clean water, drinking water and wastewater facilities, you’re not going to be able to grow,” Capito said. “You’re not going to be able to grow in a residential way, and you’re not going to be able to grow in business.”