Water Shut Off

Last week's water main break made it necessary to shut off the village water system for about 45 minutes. Many of you have asked me why Public Works had to shut down th whole system and why there was no warning.

When tending to a water main break, the usual way is to isolate that one line by shutting valves off at either end. This was attempted but the valves were badly frozen and could not be shut down. After hours of frustrating work trying to move the valves, the decision was made to shut down the entire system and make the repairs as quickly as possible. This was an eleventh hour decision so there was no time to warn anyone.

In the future, if this situation arises again, the heavy or critical water users (restaurants, the medical centre, and hair salons, etc.) will be given a brief warning so they may stockpile a small amount of water before it is shut down. In the meantime Public Works will endeavor to thaw the valves so the isolation techniques can be used if we have another water main break. Thank you again, everyone, for your patience.

A New Name!

The Kneehill Regional Water Services Commission has a new name! It will soon be known as the Aqua7 Regional Water Services. "Aqua" of couse means water and the 7 stands for the seven original municipalities who created the water distribution system; Linden, Acme, Beiseker, Carbon, Irricana, Rockyview County and Kneehill County. Hopefully this will reduce some of the confusion between the water commission and the County of Kneehill. We even had some provincial Ministers confusing the county with the water commission! I think that confusion cost the water commission dearly!

No Water!!

Thursday, March 10 marked our first major water main break of 2011! It happened just off Main Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues. Our Public Works Department arranged for the repairs to be done as quickly as possible but they had to shut down some of the system to make the repairs. The water was off for about an hour. Thank you all for being so patient and a huge thank you to our Public Works folks for getting the break repaired so quickly.

I hope this is the only water main break we'll have this spring but I'm probably being overly optimistic. The freezing and thawing cycles around here may produce more breaks as we move into spring.

I just hope SPRING hurries up!