10/26/2023
A few small updates and a short outage this Friday (this is the same as the document distributed today)
Planned outage and work:
This Friday at 9am (10/27/23) the water will be shut off for an approximate 5 hour outage. There will be no water service during this time. This is so that we can give some attention to the tank manway as we currently have a small leak.
We plan on draining the tank so that we can re-seat the gasket (as well as measure it to order a new one if this is unsuccessful). Once this is complete, we will allow the silicone to set for a while before starting to refill the tank which will take a while to get to a level to start back up the system. The aim will be to get the system back online by midafternoon.
Tank Cleaning:
Thank you for all of the help from Dana, Lyle, Pete, Melinda and her children, Joey, Kylie, Daniel and his children, Jenny and Ari for helping to shovel out the water tank. We found once it was drained that we had a foot of silt in the base of the tank, as well as a 4-foot-high mountain of silt around the well inlet. This was more than we had hoped so thank you for the help and patience of the community. I would suggest in 10 years we come together on a Saturday and repeat this. With the Variable frequency drives that we have on the wells it should reduce the amount of silt into the tank, but it will not cease all of it.
Wellhouse infrastructure and progress: (Plus explanation of why we will have a day/few days of intermittent pressure during the days)
The work done on the same day as the tank cleaning went successfully. The new well and booster pump system has been tied in parallel, with the existing systems still attached with numerous valves. All hard piping is complete at this point and is ready for startup. The final meeting with USDA occurred yesterday with everything being approved (other than two “Made in India” metal covers that need to be swapped out due to American Steel directives within the USDA).
What are the next steps?
We are planning an approval meeting with the Regional Engineer to confirm that everything is now complete to the standard of the Division of Drinking water, this will mean that the operating permit is issued. Once that is done, hopefully early next week, we will be ready to test the new equipment.
When we test the booster pump system there will be a day with intermittent pressure. This is as we test the new system and get all the settings programmed properly. We will alert everyone of this day as soon as it is planned.
The new well we will start test pumping to get it to a point where we can limit the amount of silt that it may draw up from the well. It may need some weeks of development before we do the switch over to the new well. This should not affect the pressure of the system given the booster system is independent and runs directly from the tank.
Proposition 3:
Thank you for the responses that I got back for the mail-in proposition 3. We needed 9 votes to reach the quorum for the vote which is exactly what we received.
The votes were:
For: 8 Against: 1 Abstain: 0
From these votes the proposition has passed, and the bylaws are being updated with all of the approved propositions and will be available in due course. The Cross Connection Control document that was also approved will be also available in due course.
