City provides water project updates

The Graham City Council spoke to city department heads Thursday during their first budget meeting and received updates regarding future water projects around the city. The city is planning major water and wastewater projects which are an alternate water line to the city, the replacement of water lines in the older portion of the city and the replacement of the Tackitt lift station.

City Manager Brandon Anderson said the city changed their water rates with the intention of generating $400,000-600,000 annually for a reserve fund to eventually set up a crew to start replacing large water lines. He said right now with the larger water lines the city is looking at them being engineered and replaced by an outside contractor.

“But these 6-inch (water lines) on down, I think our department can do and if we added these three (additional crew) we could get to work on that September 1,” Anderson said.

There are four employees in the water distribution department who are responsible for 122 miles of line in Graham for water, Public Works Director Randall Dawson said Thursday. The city is looking to bring three additional distribution and maintenance crew on board for the smaller water line replacement.

“In some discussions that I have had with the Mayor and a few others we may consider adding to this department to maybe put a maintenance crew that may go and start replacing some of the smaller lines that aren’t involved in the larger projects that we’ve discussed,” Anderson said.

For the rest of the story, see the July 14 edition of The Graham Leader.