August 22, 2022 |
The limited water use restrictions that went into effect Friday afternoon in Rawlins were partially lifted Sunday afternoon.
Indoor water use has returned to normal, but watering lawns is still not allowed.
The restrictions went into effect Friday when high turbidity levels forced the city to rely on the treated water already in the high and low pressure storage tanks. Work replacing 10,000 feet of wood stave pipes with new PVC for the delivery system at the springs south of town introduced the turbidity into system.
City Manager Sean Metcalf said in a recorded video statement Friday that the treatment plant was pulled offline and the dirty stream flows diverted away from the water processing facility to protect it.
To prevent the tanks from dropping to dangerously low levels that could imperil the whole system, the water use restrictions went into place Friday afternoon. Metacalf said on Sunday that the high-pressure tanks dropped to about 30-percent on Saturday because they weren’t being replenished. Since then, the high turbidity levels have dropped. Water treatment resumed and the tanks are beginning to refill.
According to the water and storage data on the Rawlins website, the high-pressure tanks dropped to 32 percent of capacity by Saturday afternoon. On Sunday, with residents apparently taking the limited use restrictions seriously, the tanks had rebounded to 46 percent. The low-pressure tanks south of the interstate, with their higher storage capacity, hovered around 50 percent of capacity through the weekend. The city manager said it may take most of the week for the tanks to refill to normal levels. So the prohibition on outside irrigation of lawns will remain in place until further notice.
Contractors will be back at work this week, replacing more of 100-year-old wood pipe with PVC. Metcalf said additional precautions will be made this week to prevent the turbidity levels from increasing as the new connections are made in the fields south of town.
Earlier this year, two big filters at the treatment plant were finally rebuilt after waiting on parts for nearly a year. The plant returned to full processing capacity this summer, and officials were concerned that treating the water with abnormal amounts of dirt particles could create a whole new set of trouble — and expenses. Out of caution, they diverted the bad water away from the plant and relied on the processed water already in the tanks to get the city through the weekend. The plan worked.
The 10-foot length of wood stave pipes being replaced near the city reservoir in this phase of the project is only a portion of the project to rebuild the water delivery system from the springs to the treatment plant. Metcalf said more work is needed.
Collecting that water and delivering it to residents is one of the reasons the city is seeking to secure a $7.4 million state and federal grant. Community Coordinator, Mira Miller, put the work of replacing the old wood pipe and wood storage boxes with a modernized delivery system into a dollar figure.
Work connecting the current set of pipes by the reservoir should wrap up this week. Metcalf thought the new connections, should result in big increase of inflows into the treatment plant. Flows have been about half the normal rate — starving the city for water this summer and forcing the water restrictions that have been in place since early March.
Metcalf hoped the connections would be finished by the end of this week or the beginning of next. In the meantime, the no outside irrigation order remains in effect. All of the advisories and recommendations are listed on the city’s website.
