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Features
Update 2018/5/25
Advisory of the day
CORNER BROOK, NL: BWAS DUE TO CAPITAL WORKS IMPROVEMENTS ON DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM
This story is brought to you in part by Lawson Mills Biomass Solutions Ltd
by Michelle Moore
On May 24, 2018 the City of Corner Brook in Newfoundland notified residents and businesses that a precautionary boil water advisory (PBWA) was taking place. The city issued a press release citing Capital Works improvements to the water distribution system as the cause.
Corner Brook is on the west coast of Newfoundland and has a population of 19 547 people. It overlooks the Bay of Islands and is the most northern city in Atlantic Canada. It is the service centre for western and northern Newfoundland as well as the administrative centre for the Qalipu Mi'kmaq First Nations band government.
Ten houses on Marcelle Avenue and one house on Birch Avenue will be affected by the PBWA. The city informed residents that because of the time required to have samples analyzed the PBWA will remain in effect until further notice.
Until then residents must bring the water to a boil for a minimum of one minute before drinking it, washing fruit and vegetables, preparing infant formula, making ice cubes, etc. The city will notify residents when it is safe to directly consume the tap water again.
Keith Costello, Superintendent of Water and Wastewater Division for the City of Corner Brook said "every year we do our annual maintenance, which would be flushing water mains to clean the system of any discolouration that's in the system and any buildup that occurs in the main ... We service our hydrants as well, that's an annual thing too, and that has started."
He explained the PBWAs associated to those works are standard guidelines from Service Newfoundland. When work on the water system is taking place water may be shut off temporarily or a PBWA may be issued as a precaution.
Cornerbrook issued an additional notice informing citizens of a water outage and PBWA to be taking place the following day. Starting at 8:30am and lasting roughly 6 to 8 hours, repairs will be made to the water distribution system. Corner Brook Long Term Care will be affected by both the water outage and the PBWA whereas the Arts and Science building on Grenfell Campus will only be affected by the outage.
Costello explained "we had a hydrant that failed when it was being operated. So the hydrant failed which means we gotta excavate the hydrant to make repairs onto it and in order to do that we need to make it safe for our guys, so we need to have a water outage in order to connect the hydrant back to the line that comes off the main."
Costello explained that while they will have to cut the water off to the Long Term Care which is part of the hospital, they will be providing water through a temporary line. But because it is not considered potable, a PBWA had to be issued.
Costello said the cost of the repairs taking place tomorrow are unknown for the moment. He said "it's hard to put a handle on it right now because of the simple fact we don't know if we gotta put a new hydrant in there or if we are able to reuse the hydrant that's there. So we won't know until we have it excavated, get it exposed and see what we are into so it's hard to give you a true estimate of what its gonna cost to do that because of unknowns that exist in this point in time."
m.moore@watertoday.ca
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