MINTO – Palmerston residents are being reminded there is a lawn watering ban in place and local residents are being asked to minimize water usage for the next few weeks while the town’s water tower is out of service for painting and maintenance.
“We now have pumps pumping water to our community,” noted councillor Ron Elliott at the May 18 council meeting.
Elliott said the previous evening pressure on the pumps from residents watering lawns “almost crashed the system.
“We had some of our staff that went around … and got them to shut down, but not without abuse,” Elliott noted.
Elliott expressed concern residents would be watering lawns or filling pools over the impending long weekend.
“It’s important that people adhere to the water ban, or that there is less use of it,” said Elliott.
“We’ve got to get the message out. We certainly don’t want the water to crash and then nobody has any water.”
“The other concern is fire,” noted Mayor George Bridge.
“This was well set out to people in Palmerston. Everybody should not be totally surprised that we’re dong this.”
CAO Derrick Thomson said, “I just want to assure the public in Palmerston that we have contingency plans in the event of a fire and we’ve been working with the hospital now for the better part of six weeks and we’ve got a contingency plan for our dialysis units there as well.”
He added, “But councillor Elliott is absolutely correct. We had staff have to go out last night and talk to more than a few people about watering their lawns and quite honestly the reaction they got from some of the residents was unacceptable.
“And the fact of the matter is, it’s true that if this continues that we will crash our two pumps, and that’ll be a problem for everybody.”
Deputy mayor Dave Turton said he had been advised by town water foreman Todd Rogers that the situation had already improved.
“I was talking to Todd earlier and he said that things are much better tonight,” said Turton.
“So all the issues that they went through last night, and talking to people, has really paid off so things are good tonight.”
Minto officials state they hope to have the system back to normal operation “as soon as possible.”
