Beginning June 3, the City of Lloydminster is asking residents and businesses to restrict non-essential water usage for maintenance work until June 7.
“The City of Lloydminster identified the need for electrical upgrades at our river water pumping station which is located at the North Saskatchewan River. In order to facilitate this work it’s going to make it necessary for us to completely shut down the raw water supply to the city,” said Alan Cayford the Director of Operations.
The timing comes as one of the city’s major water users, Husky Energy, will also be in a maintenance turnaround putting their raw water usage at zero.
Non-essential water usage includes:
- Watering lawns, including timed irrigation
- Cleaning and filling hot tubs, pools, ponds
- Washing vehicles/driveways/houses/pathways
Reported non-essential water usage can result in fines and/or temporary water shut off.
Starting today the City will be speaking with businesses about restricting their water use.
“We will be speaking personally and with letters to industrial and commercial operators that are high water users. We will be monitoring our water usage for the first 48 hours particularly, if our water usage increases to a point where we’re jeopardizing the water that we have left for essential services, like fire and drinking and having a shower, then we have the ability within our bylaw to restrict the operations of high water users.”
Cayford adds people do not need to be stocking up on bottled water and that the City believes they have enough water to get through the process.
“Based on what we know we have for treated and raw water storage within the city, we know that based on what was used last Friday, we have enough storage for eight days, eight days of water storage within the city. Every time we increase, if the water usage increases by 25% that number goes down to seven days.”
These will be the first upgrades in the 35 years it has been running.