At Monday night’s Shelby City Council meeting, members of the council unanimously voted to adopt a resolution to award a special commendation to Garret DeWitt for his contributions to the city of Shelby. Dewitt is one of five wastewater operators at the city’s Waste Water Treatment facility, and performed actions above and beyond his duties on the night of Dec. 21, 2013.
Resolution 13-2014, read into the record by Finance Director Bob Lafferty, states unseasonably warm temperatures driven by a strong storm front brought high winds and 2.99 inches of rain to the Shelby area on Dec. 21. This influx of precipitation, along with melting snow, swamped storm and sanitary lines throughout the city. According to the resolution, the Waste Water Treatment facility normally receives 2.1 million gallons of product per day; however, on Dec. 21 the additional influx of product rose to nearly five million gallons.
As the Waste Water Treatment facility attempted to maintain operation and prevent sewers from backing up into homes and business, power was lost to the facility at 11:47 p.m. due to straight line winds damaging both electric transmission lines supplying power to the city of Shelby’s substations, the North Side and George Hawk Road. With both feeds down, the city of Shelby was without power and the Waste Water Treatment facility was non-operational, creating a severe vulnerability for the entire municipality.
The resolution goes on to say DeWitt, as the operator on shift, carried out emergency protocols to stabilize the facility through “quick and decisive action” and with only emergency lighting and a flashlight. Working out in the wind, rain, and in the dark, DeWitt worked to manually open the emergency bypass valve. By doing this, DeWitt relieved some of the now-estimated eight million gallons of product flowing into the facility and helped relieve the imminent back-ups citywide that would have occurred at the time.
The creation of Resolution 13-2014, sponsored by Councilmembers Nathan Martin, Steve Schag and Garland Gates, came from the desire of Shelby City Council to commend DeWitt for his “dedicated service, quick thinking, and decisive action under duress which potentially saved the citizens of Shelby millions of dollars in damage and repairs.” With the adoption of the resolution, Council expresses its “sincere thanks and appreciation to Garret DeWitt for his outstanding contributions to the city of Shelby, and highly commend him for the manner in which he carried out his responsibilities and duties as the Waste Water Treatment facility operator on Dec. 21, 2013.” DeWitt was not present at the Council meeting on Monday, but will receive an authenticated copy of his resolution.