Sun staff
The Village of Bethel has a new sight on the west side of town after the village’s new water tower was raised into place.
Construction on the new water tower, which will replace the tower on Tower Alley, began in the fall, said Village Administrator Travis Dotson in an email. The tower, at the corner of Fossyl Drive and Easter Road, was raised into place on Dec. 22, he said.
The tower will not be ready to run until late summer or early fall, however. The new tower still needs painted and everything needs to be hooked up, said Mayor Alan Ausman.
“It’s exciting to see it up,” Ausman said.
The new tower should work much better with the north tower than the old tower is, Ausman said. For some reason, the old tower takes on most of the work but engineers said that spreading the towers out with equalize pressure.
The new tower will hold 200,000 gallons, compared to the old tower at 100,000 gallons, and the north tower is 250,000 gallons, Dotson said.
“The old tower was built in the 1930s and has outlasted its life span,” Dotson said. It also sprang a couple leaks last winter.
The north tower is much younger, as it was built in 1970, Dotson said. It was also recently completely stripped and epoxy-coated on the inside and the outside.
The new tower will not just run better, it will look nice, too. The tower will have a Bethel Tigers logo on it and is visible from town, Ausman said.
“It just looms, it’s huge, it’s beautiful,” Ausman said.
The new tower costs $964,400 and is being funded with a 20-year Ohio Water Development Authority loan at a 1.5 percent interest rate, Dotson said.
The old tower will be taken down after the new tower begins operating, Dotson said.