On Friday night, as part of the Western Gateway project, City crews and the project contractor completed a water main
connection around Railroad Avenue and 8th Street. Work began at 10 p.m. and was expected to last 8 hours. Performing the
work at night was determined to have the least amount of impact on our business community.
This work impacted more customers than planned for and lasted longer than anticipated. The failures occurred due to
multiple water main valves, installed in the 1940s, not functioning appropriately.
Since there was too much water to perform the planned work due to the leaking valves, the crews needed to expand the
planned closure area utilizing valves that did function. City crews also exercised all existing valves multiple times to try to
shut down the valves, which unfortunately didn’t resolve the issue.
Early Saturday morning, as businesses began opening, City crews notified customers of the shutdown and expected
timeframe for the water to be turned back on.
In the next couple of weeks, Public Works will be preparing a standard operating procedure for planned and emergency
water shutoffs of the City system to assist in improving our processes. We will also work on a plan/funding to replace many
of these aging valves.
We apologize for any confusion, frustration, or inconvenience this water outage caused.
Original source can be found here.
