Alberni residents are being asked to hold off on household chores while the city’s main water pipe is being repaired.
Shortly after noon yesterday, an unloaded logging truck smashed through the cement barriers on Franklin River Road and went down a steep slope, severing a 10-metre section of the large pipe that carries water from the Bainbridge Pump Station.
With only a single day’s water supply in the reservoirs, Mayor Sharie Minions is asking people to conserve.
“Hold off on showers, running the dishwasher and washing dishes while we get this line repaired,” she said. “It’s obviously a critical line of water into the community and we want to make sure we want to have enough time to repair it before water runs low.”
City Engineer Rob Dickenson said there’s only a days worth of water in the reservoirs.
“Normally we have about 4 days of water,” he said. “Unfortunately when this occured we lost some of the water during that process, so at this point we have one day left, which is adequate to mainrtain our services.”
Minions said the crash was a “worst-case scenario” and while the pipe was above ground and exposed at that location, it has been there for 60 years without an issue.
Dickenson said a dozen homes between the pump station and the line break are completely without water right now, but they expect to have the pipe fixed and flushed and the entire water system back online by dinnertime tonight.
MOSAIC is not commenting on the incident which involved a contractors truck, and the city expects the cost of repairs will be covered by the logging company.
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