PAWTUCKET — If your drinking water tastes different, there’s a reason.
The city’s new water treatment plant, a $46.1-million project that was supposed to be finished two years ago, is finally in operation.
City Councilor Thomas E. Hodge, who has been monitoring progress on the new plant, said engineers finally turned on the spigot yesterday.
Things went smoothly, Hodge said, except for a brief surge in pressure that dislodged rust from some of the city’s mains.
James L. DeCelles, the Water Supply Board’s chief engineer, said there was a flurry of complaints about discolored drinking water after the pressure surge, but the problem was quickly solved and the telephone calls abated.
DeCelles said the Water Supply Board received state Health Department approval to operate the plant on Tuesday, after weeks of tests to determine whether the plant was capable of producing water that is safe to drink.
Yesterday, he said, the decision was made to put the plant on line.
Drinking water purified by the plant began pouring into the city’s water mains between 12:15 p.m. and 12:20 p.m., DeCelles said.
By late afternoon, the water was reaching faucets in the Water Supply Board’s service area of Pawtucket, the Valley Falls section of Cumberland, and Central Falls.
“I’m very happy. A lot of people put a lot of time and effort into it,” DeCelles said. “It’s nice to have it on line.”
The new water treatment plant was built to replace the city’s existing plant, on Mill Street in Cumberland.
The project was undertaken after it became clear, more than a decade ago, that the existing plant, built in 1938, would be unable to meet tough new federal safe drinking water standards that took effect in 2002 and 2004.
When construction by Earth Tech finally got started nearly four years ago, the Water Supply Board set a March 11, 2006, deadline for completion of the project, concerned that the existing plant would fail.
But a variety of factors delayed the project. The site, behind Water Supply Board headquarters on Branch Street, is so small it was difficult to schedule contractors, according to Earth Tech, and there was a worldwide shortage of stainless steel.
Despite the delay, the existing plant managed to continue to produce drinking water. When the new plant was brought on line yesterday, the old plant was initially kept in operation at a low rate of output to prevent service from being interrupted, Allen Champagne, source water manager for the Water Supply Board said.
Output from the two plants combined with a malfunctioning valve to create the brief surge in pressure that dislodged rust from the city’s water mains and briefly discolored some customers’ drinking water, Champagne said.
Water Supply Board personnel devised a work-around, Champagne said, bypassing the malfunctioning valve and reducing the output of the old plant to zero.
By late yesterday afternoon, the new plant was operating on its own, purifying water at the rate of 8.5 million gallons a day — about a third of its capacity, Champagne said, but sufficient to meet demand at this time of year.
City officials were jubilant. Hodge waved a hand at one of the bottles of designer water that are standard-issue for council members and said they wouldn’t be needed at next month’s meeting.
Another council member, John J. Barry III said he already noticed an improvement in the taste of the city’s drinking water.
“I had two glasses at 5 o’clock. It’s excellent. Excellent,” he said.