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Grinnell water plant deteriorated, corroded
By Jandry Perez Garcia perezgar@grinnell.edu
The city of Grinnell is planning to build a new water plant by 2026 due to the deteriorated and corroded conditions of equipment, including the water softener and pipe gallery in the current water plant.
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Grinnell is currently experiencing higher levels of water hardness compared to spring 2022 due to the Grinnell water plant shutting down its water softeners. Concerns about water hardness have since increased among members of the Grinnell community, according to a newsletter from the Grinnell Area Chamber of Commerce.
“That’s the easiest issue that I’m currently dealing with … [hardness is] an aesthetic quality,” said Grinnell City Water Director John Altenhofen. Aesthetic qualities as defined by the Water Technology Magazine are those aspects of water that are generally not related to health, including odor, taste and hardness. As opposed to other water qualities like the concentration of nitrate present in the water which, once beyond a certain level, can cause detrimental effects to people’s health, according to the Center for Disease Control.
According to Maisha Kamunde-Devonish, assistant professor of chemistry, water hardness refers to the amount of calcium and magnesium ions present in water. These ions come from the residual amount of limestone and dolomite that results from the water’s interactions with the environment.
To treat water hardness, salt is used to replace the calcium and magnesium ions in the water, and salt water corrodes steel, according to Altenhofen. “[The softeners are] getting to the point that the steel is paper thin, it is no longer safe to keep them operational. So ultimately, I would rather have hard water than no water at all,” he said.
Altenhofen said that the condition of the water softener did not deteriorate overnight — it has been the accumulation of water hardness treatment for over 80 years according to a Chamber of Commerce blog.
To put it into perspective, a household water softener generates 1,000 gallons of water a week, while those at the plant generate approximately 267,000 gallons of water a day and use approximately $4-5,000 worth of salt a week, said Altenhofen.
