Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.- Postal Service Motto
Since the first of November, the polar vortex deep freeze has challenged many of the water and wastewater utilities in the Southwest Section of AWWA. And like postal carriers, hospital staff, and others who perform jobs that require 24/7 hours, water utility personnel have stepped up their game to ensure that the delivery of water for essential services goes uninterrupted.
BEAVER WATER DISTRICT
“No matter what the weather is we have to find our way here,” said Lenny Millar, maintenance supervisor at
Beaver Water District (BWD) in Lowell, Ark. “We look at the weather all the time. When there’s an ice storm or snow on the way, we will schedule people to stay. If there’s any indication that the weather is really going to get bad, my guys are here.”
Millar, who’s worked for BWD for more than two decades, supervises a staff of 11. “We keep air mattresses, blankets, sheets, towels … . We’ll go out and stock up on food to make sure they have something to eat while they are here.”
Millar’s crew is responsible for keeping the roads on the plant site safe for passage during ice and snow events; keeping all the walkways clear of ice and snow for personnel to move around; and ensuring that all doors and security gates continue to function. Cold weather can pose challenges for locking mechanisms, as well as a couple of utility pumps on the site.
“We have to put tents over the utility pumps at the Steele Plant because otherwise they will suck snow in and ruin the motors on the pumps,” he said. “And like any other utility, we’re dealing with keeping pipes from freezing throughout the plant. Additionally, we insulate backwash pumps with heaters so that they don’t freeze so they will start when we need to backwash a filter.”
By far the biggest challenge the crew has faced, however, is the freezing of chain and flight mechanisms in sedimentation basins. The chain and flight make it possible to remove sludge from the basins.
“Chain and flight has to run all the time. Without the chain and flight, the sediment will build up on the bottom of the basin so much that it could affect the water quality going to the filters,” Millar explained. “In combination with the wind, extreme cold temperature causes icing on the chain as it comes out of the water.
Because of that, the guys would go out and knock the ice off the chain to keep the chain from coming off the sprockets. This is the first year in a long time that we’ve had this amount of ice buildup on the chains and flights to the degree that they would freeze and break. We would keep everything moving during the day and then we would shut everything down at night so we wouldn’t break anything. At the same time, the ice on the top of the basin froze to an inch and a half or more so we would use wooden poles to break the ice up so the flights could travel up through it.”
Only one chain has broken so far, Millar said, and “we keep the parts on hand and we just changed the whole chain out. The chains are 16 feet long and the bottom gear is underwater so we drop the new chain down in the water and we have poles with hooks on them. We grab the new chain and pull it back up to the top and then hook it back together.”
Another big consideration for Millar as a supervisor is ensuring that his staff can carry out their duties in a safe manner.
“It’s just harder on the guys when it’s in the teens,” he said. “They have to be careful how long they stay out when they are repairing something. It’s a team effort. They track each other and keep an eye on each other
… so they are all safe all the time.”

CITY OF PRAIRIE GROVE, ARK.
For the city of Prairie Grove, which serves 2,100 customers with drinking water, freezing temperatures also posed a problem. Prairie Grove has a split system, with half of the drinking water coming from Prairie
Grove Lake and receiving treatment at the city’s treatment facility and the other half coming from Benton-
Washington Regional Public Water Authority.
“This year we actually had a raw water pump freeze,” said Larry Oelrich, Director of Public Works and
Administrative Services for the city of Prairie Grove. “We were fortunate that we have alternating pumps so the other pump kicked on. By mid-afternoon we had both pumps running again. That was the morning we had the extremely low wind chill factor.”
Oelrich added that his staff has been chasing water leaks since early December and he’s convinced most of those are cold related. “We still haven’t found them all,” he said.
CENTRAL ARKANSAS WATER
“I would say the most prolific problem we had due to the extreme cold temperature event was in the partial freezing of water in a 30” transmission main we have hanging under the I-430 Bridge in Little Rock,” said Darrell Boggs, Director of Distribution for Central Arkansas Water, a metropolitan water system that serves a population of approximately 400,000.
“Due to the multiple lines we have on that bridge (42,” 30,” and 24”), we were not in need of flowing water in the 30” line during that time period (overnight). Normally flows are down during the night. So, as normal, our operator shut it down. About 12 hours later, around 2 p.m. the next day, we started the pumps up to move water through the line as demand picked up. There was no abnormality in any of this operation seen at the pump station or plant control center as it happened. However, about that same time we started experiencing discoloration calls at a high volume in the area fed by that pump station.”
Boggs said CAW staff assumed they had a large main break somewhere and dispatched personnel to begin looking for a break. In the meantime, the discoloration calls multiplied and became more widespread as the time went by.
“We dispatched personnel to begin some flushing but were still puzzled as to the cause,” he said. “It was only after we brought all the key players together and reviewed the information and data on pump downtimes, etc. that we realized what had happened.”
With the bitter cold of around 9 degrees and the fact that the water was not moving in the line under the bridge, water on the inside of the large main began to freeze from the outside in.
“We don’t know how thick this freeze was but that it occurred,” he said. “Then at 2 p.m., when we restarted flow in the line (and the outside temperature had risen quite a bit), the ice began breaking loose and traveling the line. This most likely formed a thick slush that acted as a scouring agent inside the pipe that dislodged and carried down the line tuberculation of iron and manganese that is always present inside walls of water mains. This scouring and subsequent transmission of that discolored water northward into our system was seen at the taps of many of our customers. It was very prolific and was difficult to manage in regard to trying to flush it out of the system by use of blow offs or fire hydrants. But we eventually did. Our dispatch personnel did an outstanding job fielding the questions and concerns from the public, and we were back to normal in about
18-24 hours. No health concerns or issues were realized because of this event.”
Boggs noted that he later learned that there is an acceptable method of scouring and cleaning of mains by using this ice/frozen water method and it is called “ice-pigging.”
“Some utilities actually do this on purpose under controlled environments,” Boggs said. “Ours wasn’t quite so controlled! We learned a valuable lesson. We now know what the limits are of our system in regards to extreme cold and exposed infrastructure and we are confident this will not happen again.”

The ice on the top of the sedimentation basin froze to an inch and a half or more so Beaver Water District
Maintenance Staff used wooden poles to break the ice up so the flights could travel up through it.
Beaver Water District Staff kept ice buildup on top of sedimentation basins broken up during the day to allow chain and flights to continue operation. They shut off the chain and flight at night when temperatures were predicted to be
20 degrees or lower.
ONE MORE PHOTO IS COMING & IT WILL SHOW CHAINS