We really appreciate all the customers who either called us back today, or took our calls, to let us know the current condition of their water. We have learned that most of the impacted customers have reported much clearer water today, which means we were able to get most of the slug of discolored water sediment out of the system by the flushing activity on Friday, although it took most of the weekend before the sediment had finally worked its way out.
We also had an extensive meeting with our water quality engineer today to determine the route cause and further adjustments to our maintenance activities to try to help the problem. The recommendations included twice a year directional flushing (the aggressive scouring type of flushing) instead of once per year, most likely in the spring and fall seasons. The recommendations also include taken the water storage tanks off line once or twice a year, and flushing the bottom sediment from the tank, which is where the water intake is generally located.
We have also heard many complaints of high chlorine smell, so we looked into redesigning our chlorine sampling points to introduce less chlorine into the system, while still being able to maintain the state required chlorine residuals across the system.
And as always, the long term fix, is to continue facility upgrades, such as the Water Storage Tank Rehab project, the SCADA project, and the Water Main Cleaning and Lining project, the latter of which starts up again in April.
We also heard that people were concerned about bacterial testing. We actually do significant bacterial testing each month, and our system has been in compliance for several years. But in order to alleviate concerns due to this incident, we have scheduled additional testing, just to be safe, in order to make sure there are no bacterial issues. We will have those results on Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning, and will report them.
Thank you for your continued patience as we continue these upgrades to the water system.Thank you for your continued patience as we continue these upgrades to the water system.