Major water break leaves Snow Lake on boil water advisory

Around suppertime on Jan. 24, people in the Snow Lake became aware of the problem through shared posts on a Facebook community bulletin board.
Ordinarily, when an underground water line breaks or leaks, water surfaces in a ditch or on the roadway giving workers some indication of where to dig.
Snow Lake’s town foreman Andrew Smith advised in a further posting that the water main along the street in front of the school was installed directly over top the sewer main.
Due to depressurization of the waterline, a boil water advisory was issued by the province on the morning of Jan. 25.
Following this, traffic was rerouted and town employees, supplemented by several contract workers, began the arduous task of locating and fixing the break.
“We located the break late Saturday morning (Jan. 27) and made the necessary repairs within a few hours.” Cleanup lasted into Saturday evening, with the affected streets reopening to traffic by 8 p.m. that night.
By employing a temporary shunt between fire hydrants during the dig, workers were able to supply water at limited pressure to the Brentwood subdivision; certainly this helped prevent freezing of residential lines in the -30 Celsius temperatures.
Workers no sooner had the hoses rolled up, their equipment put away, and their feet up when they received another call to the community’s Sunset Bay Subdivision.
The vicinity of the leak had been located by Monday afternoon, but the leak had yet to be pinpointed.
The boil water advisory remains in effect until testing proves it potable.

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