Jason Kerr
Daily Herald
Things are looking better in the community of Pelican Narrows after engineers were able to setup a temporary water pumping system to alleviate a water shortage in the community.
AECOM engineer Ryan King said on Friday they made progress on Thursday and Friday, but they are still investigating the what caused the critical failure to the community’s raw water intake system on Sunday.
“We have worked as a group to stabilize the system,” King said. “The situation was certainly, and still is, very serious, but it was very tenuous, especially Tuesday night (and) Wednesday. Many measures were taken to stabilize the system.”
King said they setup the temporary pumping system Friday afternoon by drawing additional water through a hole in the ice. That’s allowed the community to draw enough water to refill the treated water reservoirs, although the community has been hauling in potable water while restricting water.
“Compared to Tuesday night, to have a full reservoir now, the community is in good shape,” King said. “There will likely be talk, I’m sure, over the weekend about returning some of the facilities, and maybe most of the community back to some state of normalcy, I’ll call it, while we continue to work on the root cause problem.”
As part of those efforts, a team of divers will enter the nearby Pelican Lake to inspect the raw water intake Saturday morning. King said they will also run a camera through sections of the line to look for any leaks or blockages.
“It’s one line, and there’s not a lot of components to it, so it’s a process of elimination,” he said.
After learning about the water shortage, community leaders closed schools and reduced capacity at other high water-use facilities. They also began distributing bottled water from Creighton. When that proved insufficient, the community hauled bottled water in from Prince Albert as well.
“Pelican Narrows is a pretty large community…. They use a lot of water, potable water, so we had to augment the supply,” Director of Emergency Management Duane Hiebert said a press conference Friday afternoon.
Hiebert said community volunteers led by band councillor Olivia Custer went door-to-door delivering bottled water in 18 litre jugs. He said that relieved pressure on the community’s water system, which helped refill the reservoir.
The community is still under a boil water advisory, but Hiebert expects that order will be lifted “within a day or so.”
While engineers stabilized the reservoir, Hiebert and his crew began looking at options should the community water lines freeze, forcing an evacuation.
Frozen water lines would have left the community without water until spring, and Hiebert said they were in contact with Indigenous Services Canada and the Red Cross about possibly evacuating community members to Prince Albert and Saskatoon. If the current trend continues, it’s unlikely anyone will be evacuated.
“Thank goodness we got better news yesterday,” he said.
Band Councillor Olivia Custer said the team has been working “around the clock” to ensure leadership has the latest information. On Friday, she said they are still telling residents to minimize water use as much as they can, but said things are looking better.
“Our water delivery helped so much,” she said.
“I want to thank everybody who came out to help distribute this water and unload it. That was hard, especially during the cold.”
@kerr_jas • jason.kerr@paherald.sk.ca
