By Ryan Berry

DailyAdvocate.com

GREENVILLE — Greenville City Council learned the drought is affecting the water table at one of the city’s wells. At the Sept. 17 meeting of the council Mayor Jeff Whitaker called for residents to begin conserving water.

“The water department informed us at our department head meeting that this area is under an exceptional drought status. Not to cause any alarm because we are just dry; we need to start thinking about conserving water – not water your lawns – they’re brown enough anyway and to get them green again would take an exceptional amount.” He added the water table is “exceptionally low.”

Greenville Water Superintendent Curtis Locker corrected the mayor pointing out the area is under a severe drought, but he expects the level to be increased to exceptional drought by the end of the week.

“Our wells at Mud Creek are at the very low end of where we would like to see them,” said Locker. “Our guys have been going out and testing the wells twice a month and I’ve even bumped that up here recently just because of the drought. One thing we found at our Mud Creek Well Field, compared to years past, were on the low end of that average. We’re not using those wells at all. If something were to happen and we would continue to go with no rain and the creek would go down we would have to go to those wells, we want to make sure there is as much water in that water table as possible.”

He said they are not trying to cause a panic in the community, and emphasized they are not threatening fines if residents use too much water. “We just want you to start conserving,” he said. “It’s just dry. That’s all there is to it,” Locker concluded.

Greenville-Union Cemetery Superintendent Tracy Tryon updated the council on tornado clean-up and the cost to the cemetery. Tryon pointed out the cemetery lost 73 trees that were either toppled or damaged to the point they had to be removed. They will be receiving funding from the Zechar Bailey tree replacement fund to replace many of the trees. They also had 150 smaller monuments that were blown over and had to be repaired. Only two monuments were broken and both families were able to have them replaced through their homeowner’s insurance. Tryon said the cemetery was fortunate that none of the larger monuments were damaged by the storm. He noted that trees fell on either side of a couple of the larger monuments but did not damage them.

The cemetery was able to quickly clear the damage and open the new section by the end of that week. The older section was open a couple weeks later in time for the Memorial Day holiday.

Tryon thanked the cemetery staff, volunteers, contractors, and contributors for their assistance and for quickly getting the cemetery open and safe for the public. Many of the volunteers and contractors worked seven days a week.

Tryon said, “It wasn’t an easy job picking up the brush as we had to be careful and work around the headstones. We had to carefully cut, and hand pulled out into the streets so the guys could use the equipment and load it into the dump trucks. We had around 5,000 yards of brush that was ground up into mulch and hauled out.” He thanked the Darke County Solid Waste District for covering the bill.

Because of the drought, the cemetery has delayed its reseeding initiative but hopes to have it completed by spring.

The cost of the cleanup has had a tremendous impact on the cemetery. Tryon told the council the cemetery operates on selling lots and burials. “It gives us a very tight budget and with over $65,000 already spent on cleanup costs, our expenses are still going up, as always, and our reserves are getting very low,” he said. Tryon shared because the reserves are low, they have had to prioritize the projects that get completed at the cemetery.

The cemetery has approximately 25 trees that need to come down and the stumps need to be removed. He also said they have street repair that needs to be completed where the trees damaged the pavement. “That’s going to cost us, too,” he said.

To contact Daily Advocate Editor Ryan Berry, email [email protected].