Algood completed the installation of new 12-inch water line, significantly increasing water flow and fire protection capabilities for downtown businesses and residents.
City Administrator Keith Morrison said the project has increased water flow to more than 2,000 gallons per minute. The upgrade includes the installation of additional fire hydrants to address previous infrastructure limitations.
“We didn’t have enough water to run a fire engine downtown before, now we’ve got additional hydrants and additional water to work with,” Morrison said. “The water quality downtown will improve, we couldn’t even flush the line, it had gotten so deteriorated, so this is going to be a big deal for us, to be a big improvement for the customers that are on that line.”
Morrison said the previous water line was undersized and had reached a state of deterioration that made it no longer usable. The new system allows the city to ensure safety downtown more efficiently.
“It means they’ll have better quality of water and if there was a fire to break out, we’ll be able to safely contain it and control it much more efficiently and quicker,” Morrison said.
The new configuration provides the city with multiple ways to reroute water during system problems. Morrison said the network can now be fed from First Avenue, Main Street at Big Mac Drive, or Main Street at North Highway 111.
“We have more options if we have a system problem somewhere,” Morrison said. “We can feed other parts of the system adequately from the other directions.”
Crews are currently boring under Main Street to complete service connections located across the road. Morrison said the project will officially close out once the old line is cut, capped, and abandoned in place.