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Routine Cleaning of Clifford Water Tower Leads to Issues
Mary Drier/Mike Kaufman
Thu, 18 Dec 2025 21:26:41 EST
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Most of Tuesday's Clifford Village Meeting centered on issues with the water tower and what had to be done to fix the problems.
DPW Manager Ron Trombley explained the series of events that caused the tower to be down for 10 days.
What started out to be a simple draining and cleaning of the water tower, ended up being so much more.
After the cleaning the tower was filled with 5,000 gallons of water that was super chlorinated but the tower stopped filling.
The valve that fills the tower broke. Marlette Exacting was called to help dig so repairs could be done.
In order to replace the valve, the water had to be stopped from coming back down in the line.
"We could not employ the water on the ground because it had just been super chlorinated. A specialty company was called to put a stop in the line between the tower and the valve," explained Trombley. He was able to replace the valve and start filling the tower.
Because of having to do that work, the tower was down for 10 days just when freezing weather hit, which caused the water in the tower to freeze.
A giant propane heater was brought in to heat the tower to thaw it out.
Once it thawed the tower was filled with 100,000 gallons of water and was operating normally.
However, because it had been shut down, water samples had to be taken and cleared for use before the tower could be put back in service.
While waiting for that, two fire hydrants also froze.
While waiting for the water samples to show the water was okay for use, a boil water notice was issued.
The test samples showed the water was safe to drink and everything is operational now.
