Bledsoe County resident Charles Wagner wants the water treatment plant at Taft Youth Development Center to clean up its act. He has collected 10 years’ worth of documents showing water quality violations associated with disinfection byproducts and has sent letters seeking help from state officials.FROM WHENCE IT COMESThe water treatment plant at Taft Youth Development Center in Northwest Bledsoe County draws its water from a dammed portion of Bee Creek on the Bledsoe-Cumberland county line.The water piped from Pikeville, Tenn.’s water treatment plant to the Bledsoe County Correctional Complex and Southeastern Tennessee State Regional Correctional Facility comes from wells in the Sequatchie Valley and is treated at the city’s renovated water plant.Source: Fall Creek Falls Utility District, city of PikevilleDISINFECTANT BYPRODUCTSTrihalomethanes and haloacetic acids are chemicals that are formed along with other disinfection byproducts when chlorine or other disinfectants used to control microbial contaminants in drinking water react with naturally occurring organic and inorganic matter in water.* Trihalomethanes: The chemicals are chloroform, bromodichloromethane, dibromochloromethane and bromoform. Maximum allowable level is 80 parts per billion.* Haloacetic acids: The acids are monochloroacetic acid, dichloroacetic acid, trichloroacetic acid, monobromoacetic acid and dibromoacetic acid. Maximum allowable level is 60 part per billion.Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
PIKEVILLE, Tenn. – If you want reliably good, clean water to drink in northwest Bledsoe County, you have to go to prison.
County resident Charles Wagner eyes the edges of state Highway 101, the route to the Bledsoe County Correctional Complex, with frustration and suspicion.
That’s where two water lines lie, one on each side of the road.
One flows toward the prison with almost crystal-clear water from a renovated water treatment plant in Pikeville, Tenn., and the other is an aging line coming from the prison property that distributes water from the treatment plant at the now-closed Taft Youth Development Center, owned by the Tennessee Department of Correction.