Back in December, the utilities department noticed a change in the water flow rate coming in from the District’s water well.
“At this time, we had recently installed new instrumentation to assist in the monitoring of the system and were unsure of the accuracy of the newly installed instruments,” says Bradley. “The District has had an outside contractor assisting with the telemetry to insure the accuracy of the system. The District then moved towards suspected areas to perform test digs at various valves along the pipeline including a dig at our repair site from fall of 2022.”
But, despite all the work, they never found a leak. “The equipment and training within the District have limitations in pin pointing the location of the leak,” he says.
So the District brought in an outside contractor—Watermark Solutions—to run tests on the water system. “It was located by the contractor almost immediately,” says Bradley. “It was found along the main line near our Flatbed site.”
District crews immediately undertook the work to repair the site, but, says Bradley, the repair took longer than expected, so water restrictions were put in place to preserve the amount of water in the reservoir.
But those repairs are done, and the town’s water supply is back to where it should be and restrictions are now lifted. “Watermark was worth their weight in gold,” says Bradley. “They were able to locate the leak almost immediately.”
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
