Rocky Top eyes water tank restoration
This 500,000-gallon steel water tank off Summit Lane in Rocky Top, unused in several years, is being restored to service and will be back online by June, the city says. It will give the city additional water storage to back up the city’s only other tank, a 300,000-gallon steel structure on Banks Street. (photo:G. Chambers Williams III )
Mayor Kerry Templin said that the city now has only one water storage tank servicing the entire community – a 300,000-gallon structure on Banks Street, on a ridge overlooking downtown from behind the Vols Diner.
The second tank, on Summit Lane, sits on a ridge opposite from there on the other side of Main Street, and has been out of service for several years, he said.
“We want to get it back in service so we would have 800,000 gallons of water in reserve with both tanks full,” Templin said. “That would give us a little more cushion, especially if there was a problem and Anderson County Water Authority would have to cut us off temporarily.”
The extra tank would also allow the city system to maintain pressure under heavy water use, such as when fighting a fire, the mayor said. “It doesn’t even have to be a big fire like the recent one on Main Street. Any fire taxes our system, as we don’t have the pressure we’d like to have. It would keep that pressure steady longer.
“We have engineers working on it right now,” Templin said of the move to bring the Summit Lane tank back into service.
“We’re going to have to have telemetry equipment installed that automatically monitors the water level [in the tank], and install a couple of valves,” he said. “We also will need to have an electronically controlled valve at the ACWA tie-in at the north end of town.”
He said city water customers use about 300,000 gallons a day.
Although he said he has no cost estimates yet, he expects the city to spend “probably in the $30,000 range” to get the second tank online again.
“We may not have to let a contract,” Templin said. “We would hope to see it online by June.”
The green-painted Summit Lane tank is made of steel. It replaced the previous concrete tank that had been there before, Templin said.
“They tore down the concrete tank and replaced it with the steel one when I was in elementary school, around 1973-74,” he said. “I could sit on my porch and watch them hanging the steel.”