City of Nelson Emergency Water Intake Potential Disaster

 

                                              City Emergency Water Intake from the Lake

What would Interior Health have to say about this?  There is a serious potential that raw sewage

could contaminate zone 4 of the city water system.

The city installed an emergency water intake at the end of the airport strip.




The story told,  there would be a portable emergency water treatment plant in time of need to make the water potable.

Questions  where is the portable treatment plant, does the city have a guarantee it will always be available?

The other story, the city fire insurer wasn't satisfied their water storage was capable of handling a major fire event at the worst times such as summer minimum reservoir draw downs.  It was installed to meet this insurance requirement. Which story is true?

The engineering as an emergency water supply showed it was to be installed upstream of the city to minimize any potential pollution from all the unknown city water outfalls into the lake.  How did it end up downstream of the city raw sewage emergency bypass?



                        


                        Cities Sewer Pump house half way down the airport strip, the big box store seen left.

This pump pushes all the city sewer down to the city sewer treatment plant.

 When the power goes out the diesel generator keeps the pump going, apparently it has failed to start.

The bypass then puts all the city raw sewage into the lake upstream of the emergency intake.

When the city was installing their grit chamber last year (to help the pumps last longer) I asked the project supervisor about a pipe disappearing off towards the airport, he said that was the cities emergency sewer bypass into the lake. He said when the power goes out and the emergency diesel generator doesn't start which has happened they bypass all the city raw sewage into the lake.

Remember Walkerton, Ont. water system contamination, 2000 sick, 6 dead from e.coli.  People went to jail.

In times of emergency what are the odds, the portable treatment plant won't be available, the power will be out, the diesel generator won't start and raw city sewage will enter the lake just upstream of the emergency water intake, contaminating the emergency water supply.

I read somewhere the emergency water intake cost something like $2M.



The emergency lake water intake can only supply the city lower Zone 4, you cannot pump up

through water pressure reducing valves to the other zones, if the city main water fails how do 

these other zones get water?


I've brought this up before but never received any answers.


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