North Westside residents will not only be in the dark, but they should conserve water.
B.C. Hydro upgrades require a planned outage Wednesday from 6 a.m. to about 6 p.m., and that will impact the Killiney Beach, Westshore Estates and Upper Fintry-Shalal Road-Valley of the Sun water utilities.
“With the planned, extended outage, we encourage our more than 600 customers on these systems, to conserve water and only using water when needed,” said Bruce Smith, with the Regional District of Central Okanagan.
“If possible, they should avoid doing laundry and running dishwashers during the outage, as these appliances use large amounts of water. Given the advance notice, customers should stockpile some additional water for household use during the outage by filling their bathtub or adding additional water for drinking.”
Should any of the three utilities run out of water, RDCO will have to put out a precautionary water quality advisory until staff can flush the system and conduct bacterial and chlorine residual testing, which could take several days.
“We hope to avoid this by encouraging our customers to use water sparingly. We’ll be monitoring our systems throughout the day and will let residents know if any advisory is required,” said Smith.
When power is off for an extended period, system pumps can’t operate and users connected directly to pressurized pipes lose water shortly after the electrical outage, depending on where they are located within the system. Those connected directly to a reservoir will continue to get water until the reservoir supply is depleted.
“Once electricity is restored and all pumps are working again, users directly connected to the pressure pipes will receive water fairly quickly once the system’s pressure returns,” said Smith.
“Those fed from reservoirs will take longer to get water service as it takes time to refill and replenish the reservoirs. If your water is cloudy please run the cold water tap until it clears.”
Go to bchydro.com/outages for information on the outage.