BWA of the Day
2014/12/17
PATCHING UP OLD PIPES IN ST. LAZARE, MB
When a pipe broke in St. Lazare on Monday December 8, a boil water advisory was called mostly because it was located on the mainline, and it was feared that the system would have to be depressurized.
"In the end, we fixed it without having to shut down the system," says town CAO, Richard Fouillard. "But the advisory had already been issued so now we have to wait for two sets of clean water tests to lift it. We sent the samples to the lab in Winnipeg and I figure the advisory will be removed early next week."
"We were one of the first communities to install a distribution system in the area so some of our pipes date back to the 60's. Some of them are pretty old. Usually, we just patch them up but this break was on the mainline to the town and we did not want to take any chances," he says.
According to Fouillard, the source of St. Lazare's drinking water is surface water. "It comes from the sand plains between the Assiniboine and Qu'Appelle rivers. It sits on top of 13.5' of sand," he says," and there's lots of it".
St. Lazare (pop. 265) is a small French-speaking village in western Manitoba, surrounded by the Rural Municipality of Ellice. Located in the Birdtail-Assiniboine Watershed, it is the only public source in the watershed that relies upon surface water.
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