There are still a few more dry days ahead for Pineview residents as repairs continue on one of the community's two wells.
The well failed more than five weeks ago, said Pineview Improvement District chair Greg Poitras, and repairs have been slower than anticipated.
"We've gone through a series of setbacks which has delayed the complete resolve of that which has taken us to the present day where we're seeing outages," said Poitras. Those setbacks included issues with piping, pumps, screens and motors as well as challenges from the weather. "We had a few days where we had to abandon working on it because this is all water driven, which is hard to do with water when it's 30 below."
That meant what was initially thought to be a two-week fix was drawn out to the point that the single remaining well and reserves couldn't sustain the demand.
"We were under the understanding that a single well would keep up in low demand," Poitras said, but they started to see signs of a problem on Sunday. "We thought we could override the system and just keep pumps running, but it just doesn't work that simply."
By Tuesday, the reserves had drained to the point that outages began, which Poitras said took the Pineview Improvement District by surprise.
"We weren't necessarily thinking we were going to run out of water," Poitras said. "We knew we were low but we didn't think we were going to run out, but obviously we did."
There are roughly 450 customers hooked into the Pineview water system and while Poitras said he didn't know specifically how many were affected, he indicated those at higher elevations were the worst hit and that they were working off the assumption that the whole community was affected by lower water pressure.
The current estimate for the well to come back online is Saturday, said Poitras. But that doesn't mean residents can start filling their boots.
"That means the well will be functioning and operating but that does not mean our system will be restored to full capacity," Poitras said. "Obviously it's going to take some time to recover."
According to Poitras, the well under repair has about 60 per cent more capacity than the one currently in service, which should speed up the restoration process, but if residents get too eager and run the taps to stockpile water as soon as it starts flowing again the reservoir will run dry again.
"We've tried our best to communicate with residents to be patient and encourage them to use water sparingly when they do get water," he said. "Our hands are tied until the well becomes operational. Our drill team is working diligently to speed up the resolution, but there's only so much you can do."
The last major unannounced outage to hit the area was in June 2007 when up to 30 homes were left without service. Poitras joined the Pineview Improvement District that same year.
The improvement district chair at the time indicated part of the problem was a water system that was built for a smaller population base.
But Poitras disagreed.
"The system that we have designed will sustain the community quite comfortably. We've done assessments, we have an engineering from that's working with us," he said. "Not to pass judgment on previous boards, but we have taken a strong stance to try and improve our water distribution system and I think we have been successful. This particular instance kind of came out of the blue."
