From June 3-7, residents are being asked to restrict water usage during electrical maintenance being completed at the river intake.
Ken Urban, the General Manager of Water services says they have been working on this for a year now and once the upgrades begin the city will be living off the water reserves until access is restored.
“We’re replacing all the electrical equipment at the river intake, it’s 35 years old now. We had an incident a couple years ago where a piece broke or some parts broke, it’s hard to source the spare parts now and it was recommended that we replace all of the equipment.”
Alan Cayford, the Director of Operations says that there has been some misconceptions surrounding the water restriction, adding that this isn’t a water shut-off.
“When you turn your tap on you are going to have water through this restriction. We want you to live your life normally. We want you to drink water, we want you to shower and wash your clothes.”
He adds, “we’re just asking them to curtail uses of water that are not 100% necessary. Please don’t wash your car and your driveway. If you need to water your flowers, that’s fine but typically lawn watering is one of the biggest things that drives our water usage up.”
Other non-essential water usage activities include:
- Watering trees, shrubs or lawns including timed water irrigation
- Cleaning and filling hot tubs, pools and ponds
- Washing vehicles, driveways, sidewalks, houses or pathways
For more information you can check out the City’s website.