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Buckhorn resident John Turner loads three packages of bottled water in the bed of his truck on Thursday morning as the community has been without water service for days. (photo by Cris Ritchie)
The water first went out in Buckhorn on December 19 following a snow storm that knocked out power to thousands of Perry County residents, including many in Buckhorn. While the water pressure returned for a couple of days after, service from Keneva Road near Chavies to the Buckhorn area is out again and residents are continuing to wonder when the water will be turned back on.
Buckhorn gets its water from the City of Hazard’s treatment plant along the North Fork of the Kentucky River via lines running from the county seat. Included in the service area are the Buckhorn School and the Buckhorn Children’s Center.
City officials began handing out bottled water from Disaster Emergency Services in Letcher County to residents on Wednesday evening, beginning with an initial 1,800 gallons. Buckhorn Mayor Veda Wooton said they handed out water to about 80 people in two hours on Wednesday evening, and were still giving away more packages of bottled water on Thursday morning. An additional 3,600 gallons of water set for distribution were transported from Western Kentucky to Buckhorn on Thursday evening.
Buckhorn experienced a similar outage in January of 2009, as did several other communities in Perry County, after the Hazard water system suffered several line breaks as a result of freezing temperatures.
On Monday, following the issuance of a system-wide boil water advisory, the Hazard City Commission declared a water shortage emergency during their regular meeting, which City Manager Paul Feltner said would allow the City to begin measures to conserve water within the system.
Feltner informed the commission that the City’s water delivery system has been experiencing “extreme difficulty” in delivering water to some of its customers in the past two weeks.
“As a result, all of our tanks are in extreme low levels,” he said. “We have on both ends of the system already turned off the City of Vicco and the City of Buckhorn.”
Feltner said the problems began within the system following the power outage last month when several pumping stations lost power. But at present, he continued, he believes there is a leak or leaks within the lines that are preventing the water levels within in the City’s cornerstone tank at Liberty Street to rise to normal levels.
“We think that we’ve got a major leak in our system somewhere that’s now showing up,” said Feltner, who noted that a crew with the Rural Water Association have also used leak detection equipment to try to isolate the problem, but so far have been unable to do so. He added that he is hoping a crew with the Kentucky River Authority will aid with more sophisticated equipment.
Feltner explained that the boil water advisory was put into place so the City’s water plant could process water at a higher rate, but that doesn’t meet current EPA guidelines for drinkable water. As the delivery problems continue, Feltner said keeping water on at the Hazard ARH medical center is one of his top priorities.
But at present, as crews with the City of Hazard continue to work around the clock, Feltner noted that he can’t estimate as to when the problems will be resolved.
Problems within the system are perennial, noted Carlos Combs, Hazard’s director of public works, who addressed the commission on Monday. Combs said he believes City officials will need to look to long term fixes in the coming months.
“This is a continuous problem. We’re dealing with this problem each and every year,” he said. “In my mind we’re going to have to do some sitting down with (City Engineer) Hank (Spaulding) and everybody concerned and do some really tough decisions here this coming summer, because we’re going to have to spend some money in order to try to correct some of this problem.”
Spaulding noted that officials could look into metering that would allow for the isolation of the different parts of the system, and in turn could help crews find leaks in the future. At present, he said, the City’s water system doesn’t have that capability.
“We’ve been talking about putting metering in to various sections for quite some time,” said Feltner. “We know it’s going to cost some money, but it needs to be done.”
Meanwhile, Buckhorn Mayor Wooton noted that she didn’t have much more information as to when water service would be restored, but added that “getting our own water plant” would be a remedy for most problems incurred with the Hazard system feeding water to her community.
Admittedly, for the Buckhorn area to get its own plant would be a task, Wooton said, and would include convincing some that a plant is necessary for the area.
Pat Wooton, Mayor Wooton’s husband who also serves as a field representative for Congressman Hal Rogers, said without the City of Hazard’s water system Buckhorn would still not have a municipal source of water, but added that a plant in the Buckhorn area has been a topic of study before and is on a priority list for the Kentucky River Area Development District. But the relatively few number of potential customers within the Buckhorn community by itself could mean that any potential plant would have to “interconnect with other areas” and serve a regional purpose, possibly serving communities in neighboring Clay County as well.
“The more loops you can tie together where its within in a system or between other systems is good,” he said.
Mayor Wooton said the current outage could pose a problem as classes eventually will resume at Buckhorn High School. She noted that the outage is already affecting services at Buckhorn Children’s Center as some of the residents have had to be sent back to their homes until service can be restored.
Perry County Schools Superintendent John Paul Amis said the snow may prevent school officials from having to make any closure decisions at Buckhorn, but said he has been in contact with city officials in Hazard about the situation.
But Amis said where the water outage creates a major problem in Buckhorn lies with its heating and cooling system, which relies on the circulation of water in pipes to heat the building.
“If we don’t have water, it affects the heating system,” he said.
Amis added that while the snow is causing school closures anyway, school officials will wait to make a determination on Buckhorn’s status once inclement weather doesn’t pose a problem.
Mayor Wooton said she has received information from an official with the Rural Water Association that if service is not restored by the time school reopens across the county, an alternative plan could be put into place for the school to use.
“He said if we don’t have water by that time, the National Guard would have to come in and bring portable treatment plants to pump it to our tank,” she said.
And not having water is not good for business, said Benny Abner, owner of Cody’s Corner and Kristen’s Cafe in Buckhorn.
“When you ain’t got no water it kills your business,” Abner said, while Cody Abner added that not having water has forced their business to incur more expenses through, among other things, the purchasing of trays on which to serve food because they can’t wash dishes while the water service is interrupted.
Benny Abner said he thinks a water treatment plant on nearby Buckhorn Lake would solve much of the problem the community faces with outages through the Hazard system.
“To alleviate the problem I think we ought to get a treatment plant right here at the lake with a tank on one of these hills to supply our own water,” he said. “You can run it down into part of Breathitt County that don’t have water instead of pumping it 30 miles from Hazard.”
“Right now (the need for an independent water system) is big,” said Mayor Wooton. “You don’t really think about it if you’ve got water running from your tap, but when you’re out for days and days it get real difficult.”
But the difficulty for city employees continuing to fix this problem may continue for some time as weather forecasts predict below freezing temperatures and even more snow through the week.
Public Works Director Carlos Combs said if the weather continues as it is this week and crews are still unable to find the problem leak within the system, officials may be forced to move into a preventative mode to maintain water levels.
“The way it’s going right now, if the weather don’t cooperate and we don’t find something, we may have to go out and cut off other sections in order to maintain what we’ve got in the big tank,” he said. “We’re hoping not to do that, but that’s a possibility.”
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