A view of the Saginaw Water Treatment Plant and neighboring Lake Linton reservoir in 2016.Jacob Hamilton | MLive.com

SAGINAW, MI — A 160-foot, 3-million-gallon water storage tank could one day add to the aesthetic of the district featuring the city’s Water Treatment Plant and adjoining reservoir.

Paul Reinsch, though, is interested in the potential addition’s practical purposes.

The director of Saginaw’s water and wastewater treatment operations will seek a $15 million low-interest loan from the state’s Drinking Water State Revolving Fund, which assists water suppliers such as Saginaw with projects helping to meet Safe Drinking Water Act requirements. If Reinsch is successful, crews could build the hulking water storage tank as early as fall 2023.

Its purpose: To provide insurance if a power outage impacts the city’s ability to deliver water to its 170,000 customers across several mid-Michigan municipalities.

Such a scenario happened as recently as last year, Reinsch said. Outages can result in a loss of pressure generated by water treatment plants — which, in turn, can impact the treatment process — leading staff to advise at least some customers to boil their water before consuming it. If the power outage lasts long enough, the entire customer base could be impacted, he said.

A water storage tank would provide a resource allowing staff to maintain water pressure levels while waiting either for the power to return or for the installation of a backup generator that meets the system’s needs, Reinsch said.

“To construct a tower is really the only viable alternative for providing gravity-fed water in order to maintain system pressure without electricity,” he said.

Reinsch said the need for such a redundancy in the water treatment system would increase as the state by 2025 phases out its baseload power supply from coal-fired power plants.

“Green energy — not that there’s anything wrong with it — is not storable other than in batteries; we don’t have big enough batteries to do the kind of storage we’re talking about,” he said.

While energy officials continue to explore alternatives for power storage, Reinsch said he was “not willing to sit back” and wait for outside agencies to provide solutions to a problem Saginaw could face.

“We already are at risk and have been at risk for many years,” he said. “We’ve been fortunate we’ve had staff that was very capable, but I think we’re really pushing it now with this change (away from coal energy).”

Reisch said officials would build the tower with features that matched the aesthetic of the Water Treatment Plant, a Gothic-inspired structure considered one of the community’s architectural gems since it was built in 1929.

The height of the structure would be comparable to the Huntington Bank structure in downtown Saginaw. The building measures 162 feet compared to the proposed tower’s 160 feet, according to Emporis, a website featuring data on buildings.

As for the size of the steel water storage tank: A comparable structure — which also holds 3 million gallons of aqua — towers over Farmington Hills. The Farmington Hills facility, though, reaches a height of 209 feet.

Records show crews would build the new facility on city-owned land about a quarter-mile southwest of the Water Treatment Plant, between Webber and Cambrey streets at the South Washington Avenue intersection. Officials also would install a water main beneath the land separating the tower from the treatment plant, Reinsch said.

He said nearby residents were mailed letters informing them of the city’s proposal. Saginaw Mayor Brenda Moore said one citizen’s concerns about the facility’s impact on the neighborhood was calmed after speaking to Reinsch about the project.

Moore and the rest of the Saginaw City Council at a Monday, June 6, meeting unanimously approved Reinsch’s plan to seek a state loan for the water tower. Council member Autumn Scherzer was absent from the gathering.

“If those pumps go out, it is going to be trouble for us,” Moore said, justifying her vote. “Our system is old, and we’ve got to come to the 21st century.”

Mayor Pro Tem Michael Balls said the tower “would probably look nice with a big ‘Saginaw’ sign wrapped around it.”

“I can see it now,” Balls said. “It would probably look beautiful, like a floating balloon coming down there.”

Reinsch said he anticipates state officials in September will announce the list of projects approved for the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund.

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