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Next year, the City of Kirksville plans to construct a new water tower in or around the Patryla Park area to increase water storage as the city’s commercial development expands.
Kirksville City Engineer Len P. Kollars said there are currently four water towers and one ground storage unit in Kirksville. These provide the city with about four million gallons of water, but because of new commercial development — such as the new hotels and Menard’s — there is an increased demand for water.
The towers are inspected once every five years. This year, the city council decided the smallest and oldest tower — located in downtown Kirksville — will be replaced. Kollars said the industrial standard is to hold the amount of water the city would use in a single day in storage. Since the city’s water plant can handle about 4 million gallons per day, a little more than 4 million gallons should be kept in storage.
The city is looking at constructing a new composite water tower fit to hold 1 million gallons of water in the Patryla Park area in 2018. Patryla Park is located near the intersection of Boundary Street and Decker Road, west of Spur Pond.
“We are in the design process right now — that will be six months — and probably the construction will take another six months,” Kollars said. “We have not put it out to bid, but our estimate for the one million gallon composite tower [is] about $2.5-3 million.”