Jay Town Hall began receiving five or six calls over the Labor Day weekend from residents with water that looked cloudy or milky, according to Project Manager Eric Seib at Monday night's Jay Town Council meeting.
“When we brought a well back online, we forgot to prime the line (which gets all of the air out before the water returns) and an air bubble got trapped in the line,” said Seib. “As the line tries to even out the pressure, the air got disbursed throughout the water, giving it a milky or clouded look.”
Seib said the water was fine for consumption and use and that the water would clear up quickly as the air bubbles rose and dissipated.
In other business, the town received a $16,000 Community Planning Technical Assistance grant to map the town's existing water system infrastructure through the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity (FDEO).
The application was one of 115 grant applications totaling nearly $4.2 million submitted to the FDEO.
The grant money will help locate where cast iron pipes are located in the almost nine-mile length of pipes now servicing the town of Jay water so they can be replaced with PVC.
With water lines on either side of the road and sometimes on both sides, this grant will help the town carry out the long-term goal of replacing the remaining 70 percent of water lines made of cast iron, according to Seib.
“Flushing the water lines systematically is the short-term to our water problem when we get complaints,” said Jay Mayor Shon Owens. “The long-term solution, of course, is to replace the pipes, and this grant will help us locate and map out the lines easier, to help us move forward in upgrading the water infrastructure for the town of Jay.”
The town had also applied for a $22,500 grant through the Competitive Florida Partnership Grant Program. If Jay is awarded the grant, representatives with the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity will spend about a year visiting the town of Jay and local business owners look at ways to help attract jobs and businesses as part of a long-term economic development plan.
The next Jay council meeting will be at 6 p.m., Monday, Oct. 1, at Jay Town Hall.
