County to meet about water

PALMYRA — Fluvanna Board of Supervisors were briefed during the Jan. 16 meeting on upcoming meetings over water options regarding the Zion Crossroad area and options for the Fork Union Sanitary District system.

The updates were extremely brief during the meeting and more aimed to keep supervisors abreast of the process.

The county has been discussing two routes to provide water to the Zion Crossroad planning district. The first option being a private-public partnership with Aqua using the Rivanna River station. The second route is to team with the Department of Corrections to use the women’s correctional facility water system.

County officials will meet with the Department of Corrections on Jan. 22. One issue discovered early in the process is the water system is rated for 250,000 gallons per day usage but the permit for the system is 400,000 gallons per day.

The correctional officials will host county administration at the correctional facility for the meeting.

Officials will meet with Aqua on Jan. 24. There was brief discussion concerning Aqua thinking a system would only be viable with 90,000 gallons per day used. The county would have to find potential customers to make the system viable.

An ongoing water issue that costs the county money each year is the Fork Union Sanitary District (FUSD). FUSD, often pronounced Fuzz-dee during meetings, has old wells that have been worked and reworked to maximize production.

There are well options at the old Thomasville plant that haven’t been used and showed better production than currently used wells. The county does not have use of the wells currently and are discussing the process of obtaining use.

County officials are recommending the county perform two seperate hydro studies. One would be on FUSD for an additional well and another on ground water availability for use at Zion Crossroad and Palmyra.

“Fork Union is a critical issue,” said Joe Chesser (Rivanna District). “It is costing us money and the wells aren’t in that good of shape.”

It was discussed if Aqua has been asked again about purchasing FUSD from the county. The general feeling from county staff was they are different issues. It is something supervisor Mozell Booker (Fork Union) is not interested in.

“I just hate to see that on the table now,” said Booker as it was brought up.