Water Conservation Continues For New Sharon
Mahaska CERT Team member Ariel LaRue delivers water to a New Sharon residence on Monday.
New Sharon, Iowa – From drought to floods in the matter of months, and New Sharon would have been one of the last places you would suspect to be impacted by floodwaters.
The North Skunk River winds its way through Iowa, usually the much smaller brother of the South Skunk River, with its watershed being much smaller. But the rains came, and concentrated their efforts on this small area, turning the normally sleepy and lazy little river into a raging torrent.
New Sharon’s wells and pumping station are located just off the banks of the North Skunk River, and even during the epic floods of the past decades, they had never been threatened in the way they are now. So everyone was surprised when the station had several feet of water, overcoming the pumps that send water into town.
With the pumps down, the call went out to conserve water. What was in the water tower was all that remained.
The calls started going out, and fire trucks started making the journey from the Oskaloosa water treatment plant north to New Sharon. That shuttle of tankers would help to keep water going into the tower, so the residents could continue to utilize their restrooms, take a shower and if necessary boil the water to drink. On Monday afternoon, the trucks had hauled approximately 30,000 gallons of water, but the water tower continued to be depleted.
The search was on for a food grade tanker to haul water from Oskaloosa to New Sharon, but by Tuesday evening, that search had come up empty.
New Sharon Fire Chief Steve Gerard said that they became aware of the North Skunk River flowing over State Highway 146 at about 9 pm on Sunday evening. “Then I got concerned about 63,” explains Gerard.
Sandbags were loaded into boats and transported to the New Sharon pump station Tuesday night. (submitted photo)
The fire departments first order of business was to get traffic diverted and they then turned their attention to the towns pumping station that had been inundated with four feet of water. “That has put our pump motors under water,” Gerard stated.
During the overnight hours on Monday morning, firefighters with New Sharon made their way to that pump station where they also found they had a propane leak. Firefighters were able to get the tank shut off.
When they returned to the pump station Monday morning, the propane tank was then gone. With some searching of the flood waters, they located the stray tank, towing it back to its location and securing it with a chain.
Jamey Robinson of Mahaska County Emergency Management worked alongside city officials to obtain a truckload of bottled drinking water. The first arriving with the assistance of the state and Pepsi.
Along with the emergency declaration, the Mahaska CERT team was activated, and the citizen volunteers answered the call to once again help their neighbor. They arrived at the community building, below the slowly draining water tower, to help distribute bottled water to the residents of New Sharon on Memorial Day.
CERT Team members arrived once again the next day to continue their work. “We’ll just keep doing this until the water is restored here in New Sharon,” Robinson said. “We want to continue to serve water until such time we get the [water] system fully functional again. We’re conserving it, we’re boiling it.”
“We’ve got the CERT Team out actually delivering it to special needs or the elderly that can’t get out and get their own water,” Robinson explained.
New Sharon resident and CERT Team member Ariel LaRue was one of those volunteers who answered the call for help. This high school student finds CERT as a way to help her in her desire to help others. “I really want to get into nursing and the medical field and we do a lot of training with that kind of stuff, and I like helping people.”
“I was incredibly excited to help the people in my community… it’s just nice to live in a community where people are really supportive each other and to get to be a part of that family bond, said LaRue.
Mahaska County CERT Team Captain Jim Walker reacts with a smile to a joke shared among friends on Monday.
Another of those delivering that water is CERT Team Captain Jim Walker, who got the call at about 1:30 pm on Memorial Day. Walker and members of the New Sharon Fire Department, along with others, were on their last big deployment during Hurricane Sandy cleanup.
It was also another important day for Walker, as it was the two years to the day that his wife Mary suddenly passed away. He found the efforts he was making on that day beneficial not only to himself, but as a fitting tribute to her memory.
“Taking water to these elderly people that don’t have a lot of money, the smile on their faces say thank you for thinking about us. Everybody says, why do you do it? I can’t answer that, it’s just what we do,” Walker shared.
Monday came and went, with Tuesday being the same situation. CERT Team members reported to New Sharon and once again began the task all over again of unloading and distributing water to the residents.
During an interview with our coverage partner CRI, CERT Team member Chris Shaw shared, “This is the first flood that I’ve ever seen, and a lot of people have seen, where water’s actually went across Highway 63 and shut it down. It’s pretty substantial.”
Those highways are once again open, even though a few county roads remain closed due to flooding.
At about 4:30 pm on Tuesday afternoon, the call went out for volunteers to help fill sandbags. Those sandbags were then trucked to the city water pump station north of town. There, they were loaded into boats and shuttled across the flooded road and field to that building, where they were being deployed in an effort to prevent further flooding from oncoming storms and the surge of water predicted to once again impact the area.
By Wednesday morning, both CERT and Mahaska County Emergency Management are still in New Sharon, helping in any way possible. Shipments of bottled water continue to arrive, and residents can continue to get drinking water at the City Park Building in New Sharon.
