Walkersville public works wins water awards, installs valve to improve service resiliency

Walkersville's public works director reported that the town won both the best-tasting-water award and the People's Choice Award at the Tricon conference, and the department also won the Border Treatment Distinguished Award. The director said the department plans to send staff to national competitions with town approval.

The department installed a 12-inch water-main valve at the Discovery Water Tower so maintenance can proceed without affecting residents on that line. Public works provided rough storage and pumping numbers: the plant pumps about 500,000 gallons a day; storage tanks range from roughly 200,000 gallons to about 4.4 million gallons at the largest tank, and the site has a generator and diesel storage to keep the plant running during outages.

"We pump, like, 500,000 gallons a day... I think it's $4,400 and some thousand at Heritage and the other ones are around 200,000 each... At water right now for about 2 days full," the public works director said. Commissioners asked about backup power and the director confirmed a large generator and diesel supply are in place to sustain operations during outages.