The 'gift' just keeps on giving

Politics is a world of compromise. Sitting on a local board, such as the County Board of Commissioners, City Council or even a Service Club like Kiwanis or Rotary has its good as well as rare frustrating moments. Sometimes one knows the better way to go, gets out-voted and then lives to see the disaster that awaits. Been there and done that!

Years ago in a weak moment, your old columnist decided to run for a position on the McCook City Council. Turned out to be one of the worst jobs that I ever had but I digress! McCook at the time was in the throes of having problems with water quality in the Municipal system. From the mandated tests our water was showing over the allowable percentage of nitrates and radio nuclides more commonly expressed as uranium---radioactive particles. McCook was pumping their supply from the Republican Valley aquifer which is shallow but nearby.

Someone, the City Manager or the City Council, looked into the matter and determined that a better source to pump would be the Ogallala Aquifer, deeper and not contaminated with nitrates from sewage residue and agriculture fertilizer. After the end of WWII, the McCook Army Airbase had become surplus federal property and the title was transferred to the City of McCook. Evidently leasing out the farm ground and keeping the runways up was too much of a problem for the City to tend to. Also having an adequate airport closer to town was handy so it was decided to sell the whole property and an ag operator became the new owner.

Tests of the water taken from below the former airbase property proved that it met standards for a municipal water supply so the City declared our eminent domain rights and repurchased the former Airbase property back. Then politics reared its ugly head and a local man of statue who had been a pilot plus Air Corps maintenance officer in England and later back here in the States started making noise about how “the former Army Airbase ground and water supply below was polluted with since banned Chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) and other chemicals used to degrease and wash aircraft engines!” The accusations got lots of press even though numerous tests could never turn up any evidence of pollution of any kind.

The unproven accusations “poisoned the well” (as they say in “logic”) and the City Council, I was now a member, elected to sell the property and move on. I haven’t dug up the record but am of memory thinking that I voted against the sale as no evidence of pollution had been found in any water samples.

About that time frame, it was discovered that the railroad had for years been having a massive underground diesel fuel leak that had contaminated the ground surrounding the one million gallon, part underground concrete construction, water tank located adjacent to the railyards. No leak of fuel into the water supply but fear prevailed and it was decided that the tank had to be condemned and replaced as part of the upcoming water project.

During all those machinations a sharp enterprising community-minded local man looked into the possibility of finding a place to create a municipal well field on sparsely populated, mostly native pastureland, on the north and a bit east of the old airbase. Pristine. Working for the good of the community he hired a local engineer to develop a plan for the needed wells and the waterline back to connect to the Municipal system. He had also negotiated a reasonable offering price for the required easement with the landowners with the proviso that the City Manager, Bingham, and City Lawyer complete the deal to be voted on by the Council. Evidently, that negotiation did not go well—Bingham got run off by the owners. “No deal and don’t come back!”

Throughout the search for improvement of the Municipal Water System a principal on the City Council at that time (for sure a Biden voter!) was against sourcing the water supply in the Ogallala Aquafer. The faction that he led, along with the City Manager, thought it better to drill new wells in the Republican River Aquifer and build an up-to-date treatment plant, read expensive, using modern R/O treatment modules. That plant along with a new huge underground storage tank won the vote of a majority of the City Council at the time.

Advantages of pumping from the north Ogallala Aquifer site was that the water was pure enough to meet all standards. The only chemical required was to add a bit of chlorine in the pipeline due to state regulation. Once pumped to the surface that water flowed downhill to the top of McCook’s tallest standpipe, with no pumping required. Incidentally, neighboring Arapahoe did just that for their municipal water supply. Cheap in comparison to building a new purification plant and they seem very happy with it.

When the Council decided to build the purification plant (a 4 to 3 vote—I voted nay) I asked to what standard was the water purified. The answer is only enough to meet state standards for municipal water supplies. The R/O output is almost 100% purity, like distilled, but is then blended to meet the standard.

Recently, in the Gazette there was an article about how expensive the latest semi-loads of salt from Utah have been to regularly flush the R/O units. Then there is the matter of disposing of the salt solution after its use in the R/O units. One plus is its use to keep ice from forming on our streets in winter.

Then in last Thursday’s March 23rd Gazette, a report was given on a study of how nitrates are linked to uranium in our water supplies. The uranium concentrations across most of Nebraska far exceed a threshold set by the Environmental Protection Agency that has been shown to cause kidney damage in humans, especially when regularly consumed via drinking water. The research confirms that we minority Council voters were correct in preferring tapping into the Ogalala aquafer north of town instead of building the vastly more expensive purification plant as was done. The gift that keeps on giving it is an expense that will be ongoing but then it is only your tax and utility money.

That is the way I saw it.

Dick Trail