https://www.maine.gov/dhhs/mecdc/environmental-health/dwp/fit/documents/UVSystemFailure.pdf
Ilion's recent Boil water advisory is not due to natural events of floods, or main breaks, but rather by human hands, bad decision making, lack of, maintenance and poor operations. the enclosed article clearly spells out the inherent problems with this technology and what is necessary to prevent failures. From its very installation and start up in and around 2013, mandated by the State DOH, Ilion has had outages and other technical issues of this required treatment resulting in Boil water advisories. We have heard of irregular electric voltage as being one issue. Lack of routine replacement and maintenance of UV bulbs as another. Inherent issues of poor water quality such as high turbidity, color, and location of the units are other problematic sources of this chronic problem.
Most if not all of these issues and decision go back to 2013 and 4 years prior. The Engineering firm that designed and engineered the wells is the same that designed and engineered the UV units. The administration that approved the designs in both included Stephens, Neale, and Trustee Moore. These approvals were made without and against the concerns offered by the MUB and the engineering firm itself, proceed out of saving cost, not safety, health and reliability being the deciding factors. The West Clark street wells were an approved site, despite concerns of the location, pumping directly into the distribution system, and having known high iron and manganese levels.
The UV system was placed in an improper location, for similar reasons, costs. A separate location downstream on the effluent transmission line was first suggested, as it would help in better maintenance, and relive problems of vibrations, pressure, and others that have a high probability to cause system failure. In both cases the Wells and UV, the known concerns were ignored, and problems materialized.
The Village answers. not to sue or seek for the original engineering company to rectify the problems, why, maybe because it is the elected official’s decision along with DOH and not the engineers who are the ultimate to blame, they approved faulty engineering and design. Mayor Lamica’s response, "can't lay blame with one person or
administration, have to move forward". His first official move in moving forward was to appoint John Stephens the very individual directly involved in All of these previous poor decisions to head the Municipal Utility Board.
As we can see history has a way of repeating itself and making the present more understandable, "You can't fix Stupid" CYA continues and party loyalty of the Republicans in this County outweighs any other factors and drives ALL decision making. To truly move forward, elected representation has to change, and the Government has to get out of the operation and management of public utilities such as water and electric. What elected officials tried to save in costs ended up costing 10 times more and put health and safety at risk.
David Murray
https://www.timestelegram.com/news/20200110/pump-station-added-to-ilion-creek-project
How the need for a sanitary sewer pump station was not known and part of the original plan and design of the Steele creek restoration project defies common sense. As the article states the creek bed is intended to be lowered, the sewer system works off gravity, if engineers were not capable of understanding the basic laws of gravity how can they be trusted on the other aspects of the project. Looks like the Village has not learned from history and is setting itself up for another project loaded with engineering and design flaws. We are still experiencing the effects and costs from poor engineering regarding the west street water wells, and Russell park water tank, these had …