Updates for Christmas Morning 2023 outage:
While significant progress has been made on restoring the water system to full functionality, some issues remain.
As of approximately 7am yesterday 12/27, water was restored to most users on the system, with the exception of the houses on Hill and Crooked Lane. A substantial leak was isolated at the top of Hill Place around 1pm and excavation took place until dark. Volunteers will be resuming the excavation and repair work shortly and anticipate having water restored to all users by the end of the day.
The well pump issues appear to be fully resolved and finished water tanks are full as of last night. The untreated/reserve water tank is recovering supply gradually, supplemented by delivery of water from outside vendors which took place last night.
Parts are in transit to replace the failed modules in the distribution pumps which are another facet of the ongoing issues. Meanwhile, the distribution pumps are being run manually to keep water flowing to users, although some may experience lower pressure until the parts are installed and the system can resume its automated functions.
Please advise WLWD if you are still experiencing water issues, outside of the known outages on Hill and Crooked. The WLWD Board and community volunteers have collectively spent countless hours this week to get things running and we appreciate the support and patience of everyone affected.
Neighbors, we know everyone is anxious to have water restored as soon as possible. Thank you to everyone for your support, understanding and kind words. Here is where things stand.
First, the bad news. Despite our hopes of being able to restore water this evening, it is not possible at this point. The system has not recovered enough water to resupply everyone, even temporarily, without risk of damage to the entire system. Meanwhile, a very significant leak has developed along the west leg of the system. This leak caused the system to lose what little water we had recovered during the temporary restoration of service this morning from approximately 6:30am to 11:00am. Initial troubleshooting by volunteers this afternoon has identified a hypothesis which will be further troubleshot during daylight tomorrow (West leg includes houses north of Trail Creek along Westcreek Road, Juniper, Echo Creek and Hill).
Now, the good news. We anticipate having enough water recovered by morning to at least temporarily restore water to the Northeast and South legs by 6:30-7:00am. West leg may have water for a short period but that will be determined by supply and output rate.
Our well pump contractor is scheduled to be on site at 8:00am to resolve the issue creating our lack of supply. Hopefully (and weather permitting), we will have a healthier supply by mid morning to be able to sustain the Northeast and South legs moving forward. Additionally, we are working to have outside water delivered at some point tomorrow to further stabilize the system. Volunteers will be working throughout the day to restore water to as many West leg customers as possible but again West Leg customers will be most affected by the troubleshooting/isolation activities throughout the day.
Further updates will be provided as things unfold but please be assured that WLWD and our community volunteers are doing our best to resolve this unprecedented, ill timed, and cascading series of events which have led to great inconvenience for everyone in the community. Again thank you for understanding.
For refence:
West Leg: North of Trail Creek on Westcreek Road, Juniper, Echo Creek, Crooked Lane and Hill.
South Leg: South of Trail Creek on Westcreek Road, South Pine Lake, Evergreen, Willow and Spruce.
Northeast Leg: North Pine Lake, Pine Lake Place, Columbine, Aspen, Cedar, Fir and Crooked Trail.
Entering the second day of the outage we have not resolved the issue. However, we have restored periods of temporary water flow this morning. You may experience low pressures if you are receiving water.
There are two main issues contributing to the outage. The first is a malfunction with our pump that transfers water from the large underground holding tank into the distribution tanks in the Pumphouse.
The second issue is a low suction sensor error that is occurring on all three independent distribution legs. We are focused on resolving the second issue this morning by servicing the sensors in the Pumphouse, this will allow us to restore a sustainable water flow to all three legs into homes. Our priority is to restore water at least temporarily or under conservation conditions.
We do need to secure parts this morning while negotiating the weather. We will provide an update on the results of our plan once available.
Unfortunately we are still unable to fully resolve the issue therefore the water is still out for the time being. The resolution of the issue is taking longer than expected due to a series of equipment-related electrical faults that require extensive investigation. The Team is continuing to work on the issue. We will provide updates when available.
We apologize for disruption to water service on Christmas Morning. At approximately 6:00 AM on December 25, 2023 we experienced a number of electrical faults in our water distribution system resulting in our holding tanks going into a low retention state.
Water service was interrupted and our Board members and volunteers have been working hard to diagnose the root cause of the issue while refilling our holding tanks.
As of 12:20 our holding tanks are approximately halfway filled. You may be experiencing no or very low water pressure in your home. We will advise when service is fully restored.
Thank you for your patience.
