Mary Alice Reporting –
Following a large usage from a possible leak, the water was turned off at the Uhrichsville park concession and bathroom building, causing Twin City Youth Baseball Inc. to scramble to find a solution for Thursday’s game.
City of Uhrichsville administration posted that a leak, which supposedly has been known for several years and never addressed, expelled 23,000 gallons over the past seven days. The post noted that this was inherited from the previous administration, but current city heads will correct the issue. They noted that the city “cannot continue to absorb this cost. The city is responsible for payment of the water in the contract with PHAC, Little League”.
Dave Mello, with Youth Baseball, said the Thursday timeline consisted of them being notified and attempting to visiting the Twin City Water Department but was turned away because the city is the meter owner. A visit to the mayor’s office revealed nothing except that the usage was now up to 30,000 gallons and the water would be turned off for an unknown amount of time.
During a visit to the park, Mello said lack of wet areas seemed suspicious, and that nothing was noticed during games that occurred on Tuesday, May 14th, on the 13th, and on Friday the 10th.
“Twenty-three thousand gallons of water is a large body of water. That’s not something that you can misplace. There would be soaked fields, there would be standing water somewhere, and if it was underground, you would start to see a sink hole. I mean, that water is going to displace something somewhere.”
Around noon, on Thursday, Mello and PHAC President Manny Rentsch cleaned the bathroom facilities and flushed the lines, this was following the mayor, according to Mello, informing the group that a plumbing company would check the faucets, toilets, and lines in the building.
“The only information given to me was the service director supposedly walked through the bathrooms of our building, found two toilets full of toilet paper and apparently that was the plausible cause at the time.”
An evening game happened thanks to the generosity of a local business supplying a portable restroom to be placed at Jackson Field, but Mello noted that concessions could not operate, and it is the source of income used to pay their umpires.
According to the City Youth Baseball Facebook page, on Friday, at 9am, the plumbing company, water district, and city service department informed them that all seven toilets are leaking in some capacity. As of mid-morning, three rubber flappers have been replaced and the plumbing company says they were causing a slow leak.
The Twin City Water Park Superintendent said that they noticed a high-water usage and contacted the city, and that there are two separate meters, one for the park building and another for the water park.
WTUZ News reached out to the mayor, but no response has been returned. Based on their social media post, they are looking into the leak issue and a solution.
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