Franklin water line issues being addressed as city can meet funding needs

Franklin Mayor Eugene Foulcard once again addressed the city’s aging infrastructure, and the city’s efforts to update the city’s water lines, in his executive report at the November City Council meeting.
Saltwater intrusions because of the drought and lack of rain for much of the year have affected the city’s water supply, as has the age of the water distribution system, which was installed more than a hundred years ago, Foulcard said.
“We continue working with our federal and state officials to rectify our one hundred year old water distribution system,” the mayor said. “As I’ve stated many times, a cost analysis done by Miller Engineering in 2018 was at about $35 million to completely rehab our water distribution system.
“When I walked into office in 2018, we had money that was left on the table that we immediately started addressing our water infrastructure concerns. We did water line tie-ins on Roseville (Street) and Norman Bauer (Drive) area of Franklin and began to rebuild our water distribution system with new valves and hydrants.”
Foulcard said the city applied for water sector grant money from the state Office of Community Development, but was competing with other communities around the state. The city didn’t receive any money in the first two rounds of funding, he said, as many other towns were in worse shape than even Franklin.
“We applied for some money, and thank God for Sen. (Bret) Allain and Rep. (Vincent) St. Blanc, they were able to get us some water sector money for $2.4 million in capital outlay funding, so we’re moving forward with that,” Foulcard said. “But again, that requires a match (local funds to match the grant money). The match for Cayce Street, a $2.3 million project, we had to come up with a 25 percent match.”
Refinancing of bond debts will allow the city to match the $2.4 million grant, which will help replace filters at the water plant as well as tie-ins and valves, Foulcard said.
Foulcard said that water line breaks and water outages affect the mayor and council members just as they affect any other resident, He also praised the city workers for going out regardless of the time of day or the weather conditions to fix broken lines.
But residents also play a role in the city’s ability to upgrade its utility system.
“This is where the community comes in,” Foulcard said. “That’s why I’ve been advocating shopping local, eating local, playing local, fueling local. This continues to help increase tax revenues that the city utilizes for 25 percent matching dollars for grants or capital outlay funding.”
Bernard Daniels, the city’s director of utilities, talked to the council about the water system improvements. Daniels said a study found that the city’s utility department has about 161,000 feet of pipe in the city limits that it takes care of.
“The overall dollar amount to replace that many lines is about $95 million,” he said. “The reason it’s $95 million is because if you replace the water lines, you’ve got to replace the roads, because 98 percent of our water lines are underneath the center of the road, or underneath the sidewalk. So if you take the old line out and put a new line in, you have to replace the whole road. At $95 million at a 25 percent match, that’s $23 million that the City of Franklin is going to have to match.”
Many neighboring communities use millages to fund water line replacement. Franklin doesn’t have a millage.
“The (water) lines have been down since 1908,” Daniels said. “The best we can do is fix them as the problem happens.
“We can only do the best we can with what we’ve got. We don’t have the money to change that much water line. That’s equivalent to 30 miles of water line.”
One thing the city is doing is using PVC lines to replace the metal lines when repairs are made, city Chief Financial Officer Ed Hay said.
“(The PVC lines) are less susceptible to breaking and allow more of flex than the hardened steel that’s down in there,” Hay said. “What happens when the weather changes is, the connections slide apart, and that’s where a lot of the breaks are, in what they call the bell where one pipe connects to another. What we try to do is try to replace those components as those events happen. The only other solution would be to go in and just dig up every line and try to replace it with PVC, which is just unaffordable for a city this size at this time.”
City Councilman Joseph Garrison said that the city is doing the best it can, given the matching funds it must come up with in order to get grants for projects like water line replacement.
“With the cost and the matching money that’s with that, there’s just no way that’s going to happen, so we just take care of it when it happens,” Garrison said.
The city fixed 23 line breaks in October, Daniels said, 19 of which were in the valves because the water lines are so shallow. Some lines are only six inches under the roadways, and with school buses, waste trucks and normal traffic, that puts a lot of weight on the lines.
“We had a drought, a little rain, and then we had six water breaks in one day,” Daniels added.
Fire Chief Chuck Bourgeois also discussed what the fire department is doing to help make sure the infrastructure is where it needs to be when it comes to firefighting.
“I work in conjunction with City Clerk Miss Karen LeBlanc (also the chief grant writer) right here on a yearly basis,” he said. “She lets me know when there’s a grant available and she needs information to apply for these grants.”
The city has received several Community Water Enrichment Fund grants the past couple of years and has replaced a number of fire hydrants with up-to-code hydrants, he said.
“Lately we’ve been getting pretty lucky,” Bourgeois said. “December of 2021 we received a $50,000 grant. With that grant we replaced eight fire hydrants and valves.”
Eight more were replaced with a grant received in October of 2022. Another $21,500 grant in May helped replace valves at four locations. Another grant has been approved for $50,000 grant that the city will receive in December, which will help replace eight more hydrants. The city will apply for yet another $50,0000 grant to replace eight more hydrants.
“The way we go about picking hydrants is, when we get rated in the fire rating every five years, they dock us for every hydrant that’s a two-way hydrant instead of a three-way hydrant,” Bourgeois said. “After the last rating, we made a list of how many hydrants needed to be changed out. We had a list of close to 67 that need to be replaced so we can acquire the maximum points for those hydrants. Otherwise we’re only getting half if they’re two-way hydrants.”
Two more $50,000 grants were used to do water-line tie-ins, the Roseville and Norman Bauer work. That helps get more water in those areas to fight fires, which will help improve the city’s fire rating in those areas.
One fire hydrant replacement totals $6,750, he said, not including fixing any roadways torn up to change the hydrants.
Bourgeois said that in low water pressure situations or no-water situations, the fire department has an agreement with the Centerville Volunteer Fire Department to send a pumper with three or four valves when Franklin requests assistance. Bourgeois also calls in additional personnel to man pumpers in order to compensate for low water pressure. Franklin can also contact other area fire departments to supply either a pump or tankers to assist.
“We have four pumpers here in Franklin that each carry a thousand gallons for us to fight fires with,” Bourgeois said. “For the situation that took place on Sunday-Monday of last week, I called in additional staff to man all four pumpers until the water pressure was back at a safe operating pressure. We also contacted the neighboring fire departments to put them on standby in case a structural fire occurred. We were very well covered for any situation that occurred.”
Regarding the community alert system, Bourgeois said he was notified by the parish Office of Emergency Preparedness that the Code Red system cannot be used to alert the public of water main ruptures in the city. It can be used for water boil advisories. The mayor’s Facebook page and local media outlets will be used to alert residents of water main ruptures and low water pressure issues in the city. The city will look into pricing for a separate system from Code Red for low water pressure alerts.