NewsWest 9
WEST ODESSA - The West Odessa water tower was built about 30 years ago but it was never actually used. Now, the Ector County Utilities District (ECUD) is knocking it down.
"They'll lose their landmark, otherwise nothing," Ray Owsley, Board President of the Utilities District, said.
According to him, the engineering process was done, "without a lot of communication with the city."
As a result, he says the tower was built 15 feet too low so the city couldn't use it in their water system. In 2012, ECUD tried to strike a deal to transport the tower out of state.
"Everything was go, go, go but with the economy in West Texas like it is now, it was going to cost us as much to take this one down and transport it over to Colorado City," he said.
Since then, the Utilities District tried to come up with other options. They finally decided with the boom, simply taking down the tower was the best, most cost-efficient option for them. The lowest bid came from a company wanting $20,000 plus they get to salvage the metal.
The ECUD also wanted to get rid of a major liability issue.
"If you look up at the tower, you see the graffiti there? Well that means the kiddos have been out here, got into the fenced in area, climbed up there and wrote their notes or whatever," Owsley said.
He described the tower as outdated. ECUD is planning to use the property to build their new offices and a more effective, underground storage with pump stations.
"That pump station is going to do everything that this water tower was going to do," Owsley said.
So on Saturday, they set up to take down the structure.
"The tower's already been cut loose. It's just standing there on the foundation now," he said.
But they were also having some issues. One of the cables had broken and much of the day was spent waiting on machinery to fix the problem. Then once it got there, it wasn't strong enough to cause the tower to topple over.
Still, they're going to make sure and knock it down, especially because it wouldn't be safe to leave the tower standing as is especially with buildings and mobile homes nearby.
"If we got a big heavy wind or something happen, it could lay down all by itself," he said.
