ST. CLOUD, Fla. — St. Cloud officials say they’ve reached the home stretch of the long, expensive process of cleaning up the city’s water lines.
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For years, residents have complained of discolored water, but the city says that will soon finally be a thing of the past.
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The issue started with a failure of the water plant’s polishers.
Here’s an update on the unidirectional flushing program that kicked off today. If you have questions, please call customer service at 407-957-7344.
Posted by City of St. Cloud, Florida on Monday, November 15, 2021
Crews spent approximately $500,000 to pump ice through 28 miles of pipes in order to remove the unwanted particles that were causing the water to be discolored.
Later, they ran into another problem after finding a few inches of resin in the ground storage tanks.
The city then had to deploy dive teams to go in with vacuums and remove the resin.
“This is our last step, yes,” St. Cloud Communications Director Maryemma Bachelder said.
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Starting this week, crews will begin systematically flushing out water from different locations to make sure there’s no resin remaining.
This final step carries a price tag of nearly $300,000.
As part of our ongoing efforts to remove resin from the water system, crews contracted by the city will begin a...
Posted by City of St. Cloud, Florida on Sunday, November 14, 2021
For residents, it could mean continued low water pressure and discoloration, but only for a short while. Afterwards, the city hopes to put their water problems behind them for good.
“It has not been an easy road,” Bachelder said. “Certainly not an inexpensive road, but definitely something that we needed to do to provide our residents with the quality of water that we needed to be providing.”
The city hopes to finish flushing all the lines in the next six months.
The different locations where they’ll be flushing each week will be posted publicly online here.
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