A water main failure during an upgrade of Lund’s principal pumphouse caused residents to be without water for close to 36 hours. Now the hamlet faces a boil water advisory.
Joy Baird, administrator of the Lund Water Improvement District (LWID), explained the boil water advisory is just a temporary measure required by Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) to ensure the water’s safety.
Dan Glover is a drinking water and environmental health officer with VCH on the coast.
“With the failure they couldn’t supply water with the correct level of chlorine in it, so we can’t be assured of the potability of it,” said Glover. “The boil water advisory was brought into effect and when they are in the place where everything is working again and they can show that the water quality is potable then they can take it off.”
Glover said they are getting close to the point where some water samples can be taken, but they are not quite there yet.
Baird said she was impressed by the volunteers who came in to help during the challenging transition.
The water improvement district was updating its main pumphouse last year with new pumps when they discovered that they had to rewire the pumphouse because of an old-style transformer.
Workers from BC Hydro came on Thursday, February 19, to string the new electrical lines for the pumphouse.
Once the electrical update was complete they were ready to switch over, but as they were bringing the new system online they discovered a gate valve on the water main was completely rusted out and would not open. It subsequently failed that night. Repairs were hampered because the main was located under the old pumps and required workers to pull the old pumps out before it could be replaced. Because of its age parts had to be brought in from Vancouver Island.
Baird said that the LWDI trustees anticipated the water would be interrupted for only a day and people were asked to prepare for the upgrade beforehand, but due to the aging infrastructure the upgrade was delayed. “It’s an old system,” she said. Baird added that businesses closed during the outage were back up and running Saturday night, February 21.
“Everything is up and going again,” she said.
The boil water advisory was officially lifted during the first week of March.
