Parts of Rockbridge County and all of Lexington depend on the Maury Service Authority to ensure that residents have fresh water and safe sewage service. The MSA operates two different plants: a water treatment plant on Route 60 near Washington and Lee University and a wastewater treatment plant near Old Buena Vista Road.
A tour of the Maury Service Authority Water Treatment Plant.
The work doesn’t always go smoothly.
In July 2023, the MSA staff working at the water treatment plant discovered a mess when they clocked in at 5:45 in the morning. A pump had somehow activated itself in the middle of the night when no one was there. The pump didn’t have a sensor like more modern devices and spilled 750,000 gallons, filling all the plant’s treatment basins and overflow lagoon.
MSA Executive Director Jordan Combs said staff spent 30-plus hours getting everything running again and even more time catching up from lost production time. The spill cost less than $3,500, but to Combs it symbolizes a much larger problem.
“Sometimes it’s hard to put a dollar amount on risk,” he said. “We’re dealing with 1975 technology meeting the requirements of 2024.”
Since then, a “rudimentary” measure has been put in place to alert Combs and his staff if the pump were to turn on again. But he said it is not a long-term fix.
“If we had had an updated system, this wouldn’t have happened,” he said.
Buena Vista was caught in a worse situation in 2010. The state health department found coliform bacteria in BV’s water, which forced the city to shut down its main water facility at the Dickinson well and instead use three other wells located throughout the city for almost four years.
A tour of the Buena Vista Water Treatment Plant.
For two to three years, Buena Vista water officials knew they had a leak—and a big one. They noticed discrepancies in water meter readings. They knew that 400,000 gallons of water had leaked every day for two to three years just past Woodland Avenue on Third Street. But they couldn’t pinpoint it–until January 2024.
Corey Henson, the city’s public works director and water treatment plant operator, said the leak amounted to about 400,000 gallons a day. Discrepancies among various water meters also confirmed it.
“Our high school pump station was running around the clock trying to keep up, so we thought it was such a demand on it because we couldn’t find any leaks,” he said.
City public works employees finally found it when they were trying to figure out how to get water to three new houses that were being built on Third Street. They tested it and realized that the water had been treated. They started digging and found the problem, 17 feet below the ground in a pipe that city workers didn’t realize was there.
“The very next day after we got that fixed, our production went from about 1.4 million a day to 900,000,” Henson said. “We just couldn’t find it. The maps don’t tell you how deep the lines are.”
Jason Tyree, Buena Vista’s city manager, said the city has been doing the best it can to catch leaks.
“We have been doing line detection and leak detection to replace the pipes that are leaking,” he said.
The approach is expensive. Buena Vista budgeted nearly $408,000 for water maintenance during the 2024 fiscal year.
Nathan Fountain, who lives between Lexington and BV, said he’s had problems with brown tap water coming out of his kitchen faucet since 2010.
He reached out to government officials to complain. “The response that I got was, ‘Just turn it on and let it run for a while. It should clear up,’” Fountain said. “This happened on a more-than-you-would-want basis.”
Brown water usually comes from older and corroding pipes, according to the EPA.
All three jurisdictions say in annual reports that their drinking water meets the Virginia Department of Health’s standards.
“Nobody wants to pay super high water bills,” Fountain said. “But you know, getting in and replacing infrastructure and rusting pipes all cost money.”