Water tower erected off State Road 85

CRESTVIEW — Passersby can see a new water tower off State Road 85 in Crestview, at an area locals have long referred to as Blueberry Curve.

Officially, the tank is identified as Mid-County Tank No. 4, but employees of the county have started referring to it as “the Blueberry Tank.”

According to Jeff Littrell, director of water and sewer in Okaloosa County, the new tank will increase storage for the mid-county upper zone in general and for the Bob Sikes Industrial Air Park in particular. A major consideration was increasing storage capacity to enhance fire protection for the Industrial Air Park.

“Our mid-county service area has two pressure zones: upper and lower,” Littrell said. “The lower pressure zone already has two elevated tanks. The upper zone only has one elevated tank, a relatively small 200,000-gallon tank on Airport Road.”

The new 750,000-gallon water tank will be connected to the Okaloosa County Water and Sewer water distribution system.

Its construction is costing the county $2.7 million, with $1.25 million coming from a grant from the Northwest Florida Water Management District, according to Littrell.

Construction is almost complete.

“We still have to have it painted and connected to a 12-foot water main recently laid up Highway 85 from Airport Road,” Littrell said. “We expect to be putting the new tank into service late summer, early fall.”

As for the paint job?

“About a year ago, our area received national recognition as a Great American Defense Community,” Littrell said. “We are going to put the GADC logo on the north side of the tank so that it will be viewed by people driving into our area coming south on Highway 85.

“There will be a standard Okaloosa County logo on the south side of the tank.”

This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Water tower erected off State Road 85