GOLDEN VALLEY – A week-long water service outage has ended for roughly 40% of the customer base in the Mohave County operated Golden Valley Water Improvement District (GVID). The May 7 failure of one of two wells that supply the system resulted in loss of service for 500 of the District’s 1,200 customers.
“County staff worked every calendar day with urgency to repair the damage,” a county issued news release stated. It said a replacement submersible motor was located in Phoenix on May 14 and rushed to Golden Valley for installation.
A boil water advisory remained in effect as crews restored water pressure to impacted customers Saturday afternoon. Well repairs were completed Sunday and tested water samples were clean of contamination.
“The boil water advisory was lifted and affected residents were notified on Monday morning,” said county communications director Roger Galloway.
County supervisors discussed the water system during their Monday board meeting, though they did not specifically address the service outage. Public Works Director Steve Latoski said a citizen led petition effort led to formation of the GVID in the 1990’s.
Latoski said two of the GVID’s four wells were placed out of service many years ago due to poor production and high levels of arsenic. Supervisors approved Latoski’s request for additional funding to complete drilling another well that will increase capacity, providing a redundancy function to sustain the system to accommodate future growth.
“Staff is proposing that this budget increase for the project in the amount of $100,000. it would bring the project budget up to $575,000,” Latoski said. Board approval was unanimous.
Latoski said the county intent is to drill deeper, taking the well to some 1,450 feet rather than just 1,250 feet below the surface. He said performance and production should improve at greater depth and that the new well could be online by early next year.
Dave Hawkins
