Woodville Public Works Director outlines city water well concerns
Tyler County Booster - September 2007

While the details of the problems with the water well at the Gib Lewis Unit are complicated, the implications are not. Woodville Public Works Director Chuck Comte told Council Monday night that those problems have created a real balancing act keeping  water flowing to Woodville residents.
  “As many of you may know, we have a water plant at the Gib Lewis Unit which consists of a well, a ground storage tank, and an elevated storage tank,” Comte explained. “We’ve had problems in the past with that well and now we are experiencing that same problem again.”
  Comte explained that there is an iron bacteria that grows in the stone media around the screen in the well, and that bacteria has blocked the flow of water in the casing, preventing the pump to do its job of getting the water to the surface for use.
  “The water isn’t entering the casing fast enough to keep up with the pump, so we have been pumping dry,” he said. Bottom line is, the well is temporarily out of commission. Comte said a company has come in and begun work  by pulling much of the structure out.
  “They put a...video recording  device down the hole to determine where the problem was. It showed the upper part of the screen appears to be o.k., but there might be some clogging of the lower screen,” he explained. The real problem is the real problem is the iron bacteria and explained the somewhat complex process of dealing with it to Council.
  His concern is the damage done to the pumps when they pumped dry, and has sent a pump to be rewound.
  “At this point we are $12,200 into rig time,” he said. The next stage of getting rid of the bacteria will be $38,400. “We’re at $50,000 right now, but we don’t know yet what it’s going to cost to repair our pumps, etc.” He estimated perhaps another $50,000.
  Comte said that his hope is that this repair work will enable the city to continue to maintain the existing well. “This whole scenario has really opened my eyes,” he said.
  “We have, right now, a well over on Sims street,” Comte explained. That was the old water well, but now they have a submersible pump dropped down in that well to pump water back out. “That is what’s feeding Woodville right now.” The new well out on Carlo Road is now being used to supply water only to the prison.
  “We always looked to the well at the prison to supply water to the city if we had trouble in town,” he said. Comte told council that they needed to begin considering, in the next year or two, building a new water well west of town where there is an elevated tank.
            “We’ll keep an eye on it, keep it going as best we can, but the potential trouble is real.”