Water outage now rescheduled for Sat. Nov. 26

The planned water outage that had been scheduled for Saturday November 12 and which had to be postponed due to the early snowfall has now been rescheduled for Saturday November 26, weather permitting. Although access to the reservoir to facilitate cleaning is now available, more snow is scheduled for tonight (Nov 16/17) and in any event the required personnel are not available this coming Saturday. Daytime maximum temperatures are supposed to be higher next week, although with further precipitation — hopefully just in the form of rain — so we are anticipating that we will be able to do the required work on Nov 26.

Provided this work goes ahead on Nov 26, we will change over to well water on this date. However, current water demand is too high to be satisfied by the well, which means that lake water will also have to be used. Hence, the boil water advisory remains in effect for the OID. Over the past week (Nov 9-16, 2022) — with irrigation having ended — average water consumption for the OID has been approximately 240 cubic metres (m3) per day. Maximum well output during the previous winter period was approximately 200 m3/day, but this started to drop in early December 2021, and by April 2022, just before we changed back to only lake water, had fallen to just over half of this amount, at 103 m3/day. (Total water demand — well + lake water –remained over 200 m3 almost every day throughout last winter). It therefore seems extremely unlikely that well water will be sufficient to satisfy OID water demand this winter. Note that average Canadian water use is less than 1.0 m3 per household per day, so with around 165 households in the OID, we are using way beyond this amount of water. (Our well licence allows us to use on average around 155 m3/day during the 160 day winter period).

We will send out a further notice confirming the planned water outage on Saturday 26 November (8AM – 4PM) closer to this date. Thank you for your patience with this process.