One of the quiet stars of everyday life on Fort Jackson is its water tower -- a 100-foot bulb on a pedestal that no one really notices until something doesn't work the way it's supposed to.

Say, during the October floods. Then, it took water-utility contractors three days to even begin to refill the tank because the city of Columbia had flushed its hydrants, lowering pressure in the pipes.

A quick call to the city manager resolved the problem.

"We own (the tower and) all the water and wastewater lines, and this is the storage facility that we have for the installation," manager Tommy Quasney of Palmetto State Utility Services said of the 2-million-gallon tank on Fort Jackson. "PSUS owns the infrastructure to provide potable water to all of Fort Jackson, (and performs) the wastewater treatment."

But -- as the floods showed -- PSUS still depends on the relationships Fort Jackson has with local officials.

"The military has gone to privatizing a lot of their non-core mission systems," said Ann Garner, acting head of the Directorate of Public Works, "so utility privatization is a big thing.

"Fort Jackson has already privatized the potable water and wastewater (to Palmetto State Utility Services), and is in the process of trying to privatize gas and electric on post."

About 10 workers -- most of them engineers -- routinely maintain Fort Jackson's water system, which doesn't belong to the post but to PSUS, which has signed a contract to maintain the tower and the post's 115 miles of pipes.

The workers routinely inspect every valve, turn on every fire hydrant and clean every lift station -- in addition to other regular maintenance chores. (You might see some of these folks on the streets as they re-lay water lines near paving sites.)

"I'm the one that keeps it all running," boasted Jim Meyer of Old North Utility Services out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

Meyer helps design water and wastewater projects, and assists PSUS with electrical and mechanical maintenance on Fort Jackson.

"The flood actually opened our eyes to a lot of things," Meyer said. "A lot of stuff was done 50, 60, 70 years ago, when no one had (Geographic Information Systems to help them map, plan and maintain systems). So, trying to figure out where everything was, was challenging.

"My mission down here is to assist Tommy. He doesn't have a maintenance guy here, so my job is every month, I come down and do weekly, bi-weekly, semiannual and annual inspections on everything from mechanical to electrical.

"(And) if there's a break, we go fix it."

After the floods in October, Meyer and Quasney had to climb the Fort Jackson tower numerous times, hauling 25-pound buckets of chlorine to the top to "shock" and clean the water.

In mid-December, Meyer and Quasney completed an annual check of the tank and lines.

Garner and the Fort Jackson Leader went along as the men looked for structural issues and rust spots.

Climbing 100 feet straight up the inside of the tower isn't easy, by a long stretch.

Two ladders ascend the first 50 feet.

Halfway up, a catwalk takes climbers from the outer wall of the tank to the center, where a 50-foot ladder extends to the top through a narrow tube.

"If you don't want to wear yourself out too fast, use your legs, not your arms to climb," Meyer advised.

"The hardest part is when you get to the top. There's a hatch you have to push up, (and) you have to have a lot of upper-body strength to open it."

Meyer also has climbed towers that start large and become smaller as they rise. He prefers towers like Fort Jackson's.

"I don't like those (other towers) much," he said. "I jumped out of airplanes when I was with 82nd (Airborne Division), but when you got a guy that's 250 pounds, it's just not comfortable being that high, swinging in the breeze."

SIDEBAR

By the numbers

100 -- number of feet tall Fort Jackson's water tower is

2 million -- number of gallons tank holds

16 million -- number of pounds of water tank holds

100 -- pounds of pressure required to push water up into tank to fill it

16 -- width in inches of line that feeds water into tank

4 million -- number of gallons flushed through system after last year's flooding

7 -- number of interconnections with Columbia water system

115 - miles of water lines on Fort Jackson

3 -- number of days it took to superchlorinate, flush and fill tank after flooding

10 -- people on post who perform tasks associated with tower