Most people tend to take for granted that they can turn the faucet on and that water will come out.
In Cottonwood, there is a team of city employees who work to make sure that stays the case.
The city of Cottonwood last week provided a behind-the-scenes look at how it happens at a reservoir and well site off Willard Street, just north of where it turns into Monte Tesoro Drive.
The city has also had to spend quite a bit of money building and maintaining a system to treat arsenic in local drinking water.
The system is due to federal regulations passed by the Environmental Protection Agency over a decade ago, rules that have a particular impact here in the West where arsenic tends to occur in water naturally.
“[Cottonwood has] installed federally-mandated arsenic remediation equipment at a cost of several million dollars along with the expenditure for continued operations of this complex system,” according to a report from the city’s public works department. “The capital and operational funds expended on the mandated arsenic treatment accounts for a significant amount on residents’ monthly water bills.”
The city worked over the last decade to purchase privately owned water systems to bring them all under a municipal banner.
The arsenic treatment requirement was one of the reasons the private companies sought to sell their systems to the city, said Roger Biggs, utilities general manager for the city of Cottonwood.
To read the full story, see the Wednesday, June 3, edition of the Cottonwood Journal Extra.
