Hardin County will need more water to accommodate the BlueOval SK Battery Park.
The Hardin County Second Water District is the water provider for the industrial park. They also own and operate the park’s sewer collection system.
The district’s general manager, Sean Juravic, told a magistrate in Hardin County Treasury Court on Tuesday that the district met with Ford officials to discuss projected demand. Youravich said Ford could have three stages, each requiring a different amount of water.
Starting in February 2025, Phase 1 will require the first battery building at 1.4 million gallons per day, Youravich said. Starting in January 2027, the second phase will add 1.4 million gallons of capacity per day to the second battery building.
“Then, they told us the third phase, which was not part of this original project,” Youravich said. “They mentioned the potential to build a third building on site. If that happened, the total demand would be about 4.2 million gallons of water per day [per day]. “
Before the announcement of the BlueOval SK, the region was not even forecasting to even approach the system’s current capacity of 14.4 million gallons per day by 2040.
“This includes 8.1 million gallons from the White Mills facility, 3.3 million gallons from the City Springs facility, and 3 million gallons from the Louisville Water connection,” Youravich said of their maximum capacity.
With the addition of BlueOval SK, that forecast looks very different.
“With regards to the second phase of their project, peak demand will exceed our current system capacity,” Youravich said.
The growth caused by BlueOval SK must also be considered, further driving water demand.
“When you start looking at this, you can quickly see that we start to exceed our system capacity, and we have a deficit of about 8.6 million gallons per day by 2040,” Youravich cites a graph showing projected water demand Say. “But, we’ve got plans.”
Youravich said the board has been very progressive over the years and has conducted multiple studies to determine where future water in Hardin County will come from.
“The decision was made a few years ago to get water from Louisville Water,” he said.
The link is designed to expand, which Youravich said was their intention.
Short-term needs in the region to meet the growing demand include the construction of a 2-million-gallon tank at or near the Glendale facility, a 10-million-gallon-per-day pumping station, and the expansion of two existing pumping stations, he said.
“These short-term needs will allow us to expand our capacity from our current Louisville water connection to 10 million gallons per day.”
In the long run, Youravich said they will need miles of mains transmission, a few pumping stations and possibly two 1 million-gallon storage tanks.
“The long-term need is the infrastructure requirement to increase Louisville connections from 10 million to 7 to 10 million gallons per day,” he said.
Seth Dukes can be reached at 270-505-1413 or by email at [email protected].
