Water Treatment
The City of Brazil owns and operates a municipal Water Treatment Plant, well field and water distribution system. The water utility consists of approximately 4,800 service connections within city limits and the surrounding areas. Brazil also supplies 3 purchase water systems, which are Carbon, Center Point andKnightsville/Harmony water works.
Water Collection
Brazil City Water Treatment collects its water from a Glacial Aquafer that is located along the Big Walnut Creek in Putnam County, and that water is then piped five miles west for filtration and treatment at the water treatment plant via an 18” cast iron main. The treatment plant currently has five wells in operation located on the West bank of the Creek. Each ground water well is approximately 65’ in depth in order to reach the aquafer located below. The five wells that are currently in production range in age from the oldest well drilled in 1982 to the newest well drilled in 2010. There is additional well and treatment plant property on the East bank of the Walnut Creek that in the future will be used for additional ground water wells as the Utility grows and expands to help meet that future demand for clean and safe drinking water.
Treatment Plant Capacity
The Brazil Water Treatment Plant, located on E U.S. Hwy 40, was built in the 1950’s and then upgraded in 1998 and then again in 2010. The Water Treatment Plant filters and produces approximately 1.8-2.5 million gallons of water each day in order to supply its customers and three additional purchase water systems. The plant currently has in operation three pressure filters that are each capable of filtering 1.5 million gallons of water daily, two 900k gallon ground storage tanks for a total on site storage capacity of 1.8 million gallons of water and three 100 horse power pumps to send the water from the plant to the system’s two elevated storage water towers and its customers. The water towers were constructed as part of a water grant in 2010. The new water towers are located at Craig Park and interstate I-70. The water storage capacity at Craig Park is 750K gallons and the I-70 tank capacity is 250K gallons for an additional combined storage of 1 million gallons of water.
Water Main
The plant, towers and all of the customers that are supplied by Brazil Water are serviced by approximately 100 miles of water main which are operated, installed and maintained by the City of Brazil Water Distribution Department. The water mains consist of cast iron, plastic C900, PVC, ductal, and Tansite ranging in sizes of 1” all the way up to 18” in diameter depending on location and the demand of the area they are servicing.
NOTICE REGARDING FEDERAL LEAD SERVICE LINE INVENTORY AND SAFE DRINKING WATER
On December 16, 2021 the Biden and Harris administration launched a historic and unprecedented plan labeled the “The Biden-Harris Lead Pipe and Paint Action Plan”, which calls for the replacement of all lead pipes. The first step of this new plan was for all water utilities to create an inventory of all water service lines.
Over the past few years, Brazil City Water has been working to inventory and identify all 5000+ active and inactive service line connection pipe materials within the water system. By the end of the investigative portion of the new inventory plan, Brazil was able to confidently say that there were NO LEAD service lines within the water system, however roughly 6.5% of all the service lines inventoried were made of galvanized pipe.
Next steps are, now that the inventory has been collected and the data has been submitted to the EPA, each utility is required to notify all the customers who were identified to have lead, galvanized pipes requiring replacement, or unknown service lines annually until the service lines are renewed.
There are approximately 700 service line connections, or 6.5% of all service line
connections within the Brazil Water System that are directly affected and who will be receiving a notification via the US postal service in the coming weeks. This notification will be mailed out on or by November 14, 2024. and it will have information regarding the service line material and any possible health risks associated with that line in addition to information on how to limit exposure to any possible lead in the drinking water.
The time frame to remove all utility owned service lines will be sometime in 2035 as the
Brazil Water will be working to remove and renew the utilities identified galvanized
service lines. View downloads in the right sidebar for more information on safe drinking water.
