The Water System and
Proposed Improvements
The Utilities Board of the City of Sylacauga ("the Board") owns, maintains and operates a water system consisting of two (2) wells, two water supply reservoirs (Lake Howard and Lake Virginia), a conventional surface water treatment plant, water transmission and distribution mains, six (6) water booster pumping stations and ten (10) water storage tanks. The Board currently supplies an average of 3.412 million gallons of potable water per day to 7,348 residential, commercial and industrial customers in and contiguous to the City of Sylacauga. The maximum peak demand for potable water during 2008 was 4.430 million gallons per day.
The primary source of potable water is the Lake Howard Water Treatment Plant, with the wells being utilized only to meet peak demand. The Lake Howard Plant is provided raw water by two (2) impoundments – Lake Howard and Lake Virginia. The nominal capacity of the surface water treatment facilities is approximately 4.19 million gallons per day based on two gallons per minute per square foot of filter area. Additional water volumes may be produced at the water treatment plants via an increase in surface area filtration rate with special permission from the Alabama Department of Environmental Management (“ADEM”). The combined capacity of the wells is slightly less than two (2) million gallons of water per day.
Lake Howard has a water storage capacity of 1,075 million gallons while Lake Virginia has a storage capacity of 552 millions gallons. The “safe” combined yield of Lake Howard and Lake Virginia is approximately 9.944 million gallons per day during extreme 120-days drought conditions. The ten storage tanks in the system have a combined storage capacity of 8.56 million gallons. The distribution system consists of approximately 348 miles of pipe ranging in size from 2 inch to 24 inch in diameter. There are 763 fire hydrants located within the system.