CENTERVILLE—The city is applying for a federal grant to help replace the Green Steel Tank. The 500,000-gallon water tank located near Parrish Lane and 700 East was constructed in 1971.  It was refurbished/recoated in the late 1990s. It has met its expected life expectancy and the city has been dealing with significant rust and deterioration including pinhole leaks, City Engineer Kevin Campbell said. The tank currently serves about 204 homes, interim Public Works Director Mike Carlson told the City Council at their April 6 meeting. Future development is expected in the area, he said.

City officials hope to replace the Green Steel Tank with a reinforced concrete million-gallon tank. Campbell said his department had projected the city’s population out to 2050 in determining future use of the new tank. 

“We’ve doubled the size because this million-gallon tank will get us well past the year 2050,” he said. “We think there could be some use on the west side for irrigation. We’re being very conservative.”

City Manager Brant Hanson told the council that the tank replacement was one of four projects city representatives brought to the attention of the state’s Congressional representatives that they met with in December. Congress recently introduced a reformed earmarking process for local government projects, known as Community Project Funding after a 10-year ban. Representatives may again request funding to support specific community projects.

Senators Mike Lee and Mitt Romney and Rep. Chris Stewart expressed their support and optimism that the project would receive federal funding, Hanson said.

“We are actually ahead of the game at this point,” he said. “There’s not many communities ready like we are with shovel-ready projects. We have high hopes that we’ll be front of the line for some of these funds that will be made available to local governments.”

Current cost estimates suggest that the replacement tank could cost $1,942,097.50; property acquisition would be $500,000 of that cost. City officials are looking at acquiring property around a half mile north of the current tank to build the new tank.

The new tank would be built around 4,700 feet. Twenty feet tall, it would be buried in the ground, like the Parrish Lane reservoir, Campbell said. The City Council unanimously approved a resolution of support for the project, the first step in the grant process, at that meeting.

City officials will now work with the city’s federal lobbyist to apply for a grant or other financial assistance to fund or partially fund the tank replacement project.