Fairbury Continues To Examine Water Situation

By Gordon HopkinsA mechanical failure Friday evening illustrated the tenuous nature of the City of Fairbury’s current water situation. On August 22, shortly before 10 p.m., Fairbury Water Superintendent Gregg DeFrain reported, “We have lost pumping to one of our three wells at the east well field.”With reduced water pumping capacity, the city issued a Stage Three Water Emergency, asking residents of Fairbury to reduce water usage until the pump was back in operation.Water restrictions were lifted Saturday morning around 10 a.m. DeFrain posted on Facebook, “Thanks to the wonderful response time of Sargent Drilling of Geneva all necessary repairs have been made and all wells are functioning.”This came just 10 days after water restrictions had been lifted by the city.Those water restrictions had been in place for most of the summer and were lifted on August 12, 2025. The city has been subject to water restrictions for the past few summers due to persistent drought conditions.Fairbury Mayor Kelly Davis cited recent rainfall as the reason the restrictions could be lifted.The mayor spoke about the matter at a meeting of the Fairbury City Council earlier this week, “So, just wanted people know that with the recent rains, we still have low wells out east, but I think we’re doing pretty good.” A Water Sourcing Committee was created on December 6, 2022, to locate a lower-nitrate source of water to supplement the East well field that currently supplies the City of Fairbury with drinking water and which consistently tests in the higher range for nitrates.While the city has another source of water at Crystal Springs, that well field has been offline since 2021 due to the presence of biofilm, which is a collection of microorganisms in which cells stick to each other and also to a surface. While biofilm normally does not present a health risk, it clogs the filters and pumping equipment. Mayor Davis discussed the matter after a city council meeting on Tuesday, August 19, “The biofilm isn’t dangerous for the water, it’s just plugging up our system and costing us a lot of money.”Efforts of the Water Sourcing Committee are currently focused on back into operation. In the past, the city examined the possibility of a treatment plant to extract nitrates from the water but the difficulty is that those methods result in high quantities of wastewater that would require disposal.A newer technology under consideration, biological nitrate removal, results in less waste water than other water treatment methods, such as reverse osmosis or ion exchange. The city has recently completed two of three pilot-test studies for such water treatment. While the results were not available as of press time, Mayor Davis was confident the solution to Fairbury’s water troubles was close.“We’ve got a two-million-gallon reservoir down by the power plant, underground water storage for the city supply,” said the mayor. “If we get Crystal Springs back online, we won’t have to go into water restrictions for anything.”

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