By Don Urquhart, Times Chronicle
The “significant instrumentation failure” on Sunday night (Feb 11) that saw a boil water advisory issued Monday morning for a large swath of Osoyoos and adjoining areas along with a Water Quality Advisory for the entire domestic water system has been put down to a power outage on Feb. 10.
That equipment failure caused one of the town’s booster water reservoirs – the 340 Booster Station – to run dry and the towns’ main 340 South Reservoir to drain to “critical levels”.
In a followup statement from the Operational Services department, the town said it believes a power outage on Saturday, Feb. 10 led to the 340-booster station and other related hardware malfunctioning.
The two-basin 340 South Reservoir at the end of 74th Ave. supplies nearly 80 per cent of Osoyoos’ water needs. This main reservoir also feeds into the 402 Reservoir at Strawberry Creek and the Dividend Ridge Reservoir.
“This suspected incident led to the incapacitation of the backup battery power unit, resulting in the station shutting down and the main monitoring computer going offline,” said public works. As a result the early warning system failed to register the problem.
The town’s operations staff discovered this on Sunday and immediately initiated troubleshooting to restore functionality and repair any damage, they said.
Due to the power outage, town staff believe the pressure in the 402-reservoir zone may have dropped below the minimum requirement of 20 psi.
This situation could potentially lead to back flow and introduce bacteria into the water supply and as such a boil water advisory was issued for the affected area as a precautionary measure and in line with standard practices, the town said.
The drop in reservoir levels also stirred up settled particles creating increased turbidity, or brown and discoloured water, leading to a town-wide Water Quality Advisory.
Staff are actively flushing out the system and conducting necessary water quality tests it said, adding that once it receives negative results from the laboratory, the water quality advisories will be reevaluated. The results of these tests will be known by Friday this week.
“We appreciate your understanding and cooperation during this time; the safety and quality of your water supply remain our top priority,” the town said.
The Boil Water Notice applies to the
115 th Street Meadowlark Drive Wren Place and Drive Raven Court Finch Crescent Swan Crescent Sandpiper Place Killdeer Place Curlew Court
107 th Street 42 nd Avenue 26 th Avenue 12 th Avenue 6 th Avenue
Hwy 97 north of Hwy 3 100 th Avenue 116 th Avenue 115 th Avenue 89 th Street
Any concerns or questions can be addressed to the Operational Services Department at 250.495.6213 or [email protected].
