CALEB NICKERSON
SHAWVILLE June 1, 2020
On Friday, the muicipality of Shawville announced a boil water advisory would come into effect on June 1 at 7 a.m. and lasting for at least a week.
Shawville councillor Bill McCleary explained that the town is doing some work on the springs that . . .
supply the town’s water and the backup wells don’t have sufficient chlorination to meet provincial guidelines.
“We have to go on the wells, which doesn’t have … a proper chlorine system, to do some work at the springs, which involves replacing a spare pump, replacing some piping and possibly digging up the spring beds and putting in new screens, preventing some of the overflow going into the creek,” he explained. “The springs normally provide all the water that we need, but over the years the pipes that are buried in the spring beds get clogged up so you … don’t get access to all the flow that you could have.”
“We have to issue a boil water advisory, because the ministry says you need, I think it’s .03 per cent chlorine in your end product,” he continued. “Not that there’s anything wrong with the water, that’s just the law since Walkerton, basically. There has to be residual chlorine in municipal water. I would not be one bit afraid to drink it myself, but we can’t as a town take that chance.”
Shawville residents have been advised to bring any water they are using for cooking or drinking to a boil for at least a minute before consuming it. McCleary said that they are estimating that the repairs will only take five or six days, but noted that it could last up to two weeks if there are complications. He added that they are also planning for some repairs to the town’s water tower in the near future, which would include an upgraded chlorination system, and said that an engineering firm had already been hired for the work.
“As all this is happening, there’s a minor problem with the tower,” he said. “The roof and one of the top sections has a spot on it that’s soft, so we’ll have to do some repairs to the tower itself. That can get complicated. We can still run the town[‘s water] without the tower because the way it comes up from the springs, everything is pressurized, all the tower is doing is … it’s a buffer. You can run the town without the tower, but it involves kind of a manual control to divert some water into an overflow. It’s a tricky thing for everything to be happening at one time. Which maybe is good. We’ll get it all fixed at once.”
