By Don Urquhart, Times Chronicle
The Town of Oliver has rescinded Stage 3 Domestic Water Restrictions for town water and rural domestic water system users after three weeks of water issues perplexed residents.
The Town rescinded the restriction today after putting the Rockcliffe Well – the main source of Oliver’s domestic water supply – back into service.
Oliver had been placed under a boil water advisory on July 17, due to a mechanical malfunction on the chlorine delivery system which turned up higher than normal “background bacteria” levels in the water leading it to act out of an “abundance of caution”.
Testing of the water distribution system came back negative for bacteria which led the town to rescind the boil water advisory on July 23.
However, Stage 3 Water Restrictions remained in effect for Town of Oliver and Rural Domestic Water System customers, leading to some confusion among residents.
In response to Times Chronicle queries, Kelly Mercer, Director of Operations for the Town of Oliver said there were two separate issues.
The boil water advisory was due to bacteria in the overall water supply due to the chlorine delivery failure and the Stage 3 water restrictions were left in place because “the Rockcliffe Well remained off-line due to the bacteria in the well”.
“Without Rockcliffe in production, we have a shortage of water supply for fire flow supply in the event of an emergency,” Mercer said.
He added that the Rockcliffe Well was then treated using the “simple chlorination method” which is used to “inactivate or control microorganism populations in a well”.
With testing indicating water quality returning to acceptable levels the Rockcliffe Well was returned to operation and the Stage 3 restriction removed today.
To further complicate issues, while all of this was occurring the Hester Creek Pumphouse supplying irrigation water to Systems 4, 5, 6, and 7 (all properties south of Oliver) was put out of action by a transformer malfunction on July 29. FortisBC fixed the issue within a day enabling the pumphouse to continue operating on July 30.
Going forward Mercer says his department is planning to do a thorough cleaning of the Rockcliffe well casing this fall when water demand drops off.
“There should be no stage restrictions during the cleaning process as the demand will be much lower, and we can maintain safe water levels using the other wells,” he added.
