After about a month of being under a boil water advisory, the City of Saxman lifted the notice on Thursday, Feb. 13. Saxman City Clerk Yeił Atoowu Ginger McCormick said the water was never actually contaminated, the notice was just precautionary.
“This particular water boil notice was only out there due to the amount of water we had in our tank,” McCormick said. “And because it was so low, we put the water boil notice out just in case we had to do something to contaminate the water, which we never did.”
McCormick said the issue stemmed from a necessary replacement of the filtration system back in December, which caused an initial boil notice lasting about a week. Apparently when the system was replaced, there weren’t enough of the filtration materials like sand added in, so it was malfunctioning and not producing enough water.
The problem was complicated by heavy rains that created dirty water, and the discovery of a large leak in one of the water pipes. McCormick said the hole in the pipe was more than two inches long, and getting it patched helped stabilize water levels. The city is having a professional leak inspector come out to search for any other faulty pipes.
The recent boil notices were a product of planned maintenance, McCormick said, and now the system should run smoothly.
“Everything has a timeline on it, and this water plant’s timeline is every ten years or so, they have to switch out the filters,” McCormick said. “So this was an expected hiccup.”
McCormick said the main hold up in getting off the boil notice was waiting for the delivery of a “core sampler” device to test the levels of filtration material. Once they received that and adjusted the levels in the filtration system, McCormick said it quickly started producing more water. In order to remove a boil notice though, the city had to send three separate water samples to the state to get tested, which all came back clean.
