Water pressure drop caused by power outage: city

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This article was published 18/01/2010 (5771 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WINNIPEG — The water-service interruption that prevented many Winnipeggers from taking their Monday-morning showers or making coffee was due entirely to a power outage, the city says.

The city has three pumping stations that take treated water from city reservoirs and send it into the water distribution system.

All three were affected by the power outage, but only two had natural-gas backup power, city water services manager Diane Sacher told reporters this afternoon.

Although two pumps switched over to their backup power supplies – one immediately and the other after a manual start-up – two pumps were not enough to meet the water demands of the morning, a peak-use time for water usage.

There was low water pressure throughout the city for 20 to 30 minutes, after which time the system returned to normal, Sacher said.

"To our knowledge, this has never happened before," she said.

"People were very frustrated this morning. This really demonstrates how critical our water supply is."

The city does not plan to make any changes to its water operations, but is nonetheless reviewing the incident.

The city’s water-treatment plant, which has its own generators, was not affected by the power outage.

Wastewater treatment also was not affected, Sacher said.

This morning, the outage at Manitoba Hydro’s Goulet Street station also knocked out power to about 1,600 houses in old St. Boniface.

Power has now been restored and the system is returning to normal.

Hydro spokeswomen Anita Mitchell said the cause of the outage is under investigation.

During the water outage, the city’s 311 telephone line left callers listening to a busy signal as the information system struggled to deal with high call volumes.

The lines were clear, with no calls in the queue, by 8:15 a.m., city spokeswoman Michelle Bailey said.

Bartley.Kives@freepress.mb.ca