The community of Vavenby had some water troubles the last couple weeks, but the Thompson-Nicola Regional District (TNRD) assures things are clearing up as quick as possible.
The issue was first noticed Sept. 7 when the TNRD’s utility operator noticed the North Thompson River near Vavenby had gone from its normal colour to running like chocolate milk, said Jake Delvin, director of environmental services for the TNRD.
“It was really evident upstream was putting a lot of sediment into the river,” Delvin said.
“Since the community water supply is basically a direct intake off of the North Thompson River, that sediment plume has an immediate and direct impact on the community water system, so we take appropriate measures when these things happen.”
Delvin added the affected communities were put on a boil water notice because the chlorine added to disinfect the water has a tough time doing its job due to the high volume of sediment.
TNRD managed the situation as best it could, Delvin said, but still had to issue the advisory while it tried to figure out where the source of sediment was coming from, while trying to get an idea of how long the disruption would last.
Notices were given via calling service and social media to make sure everyone knew to boil their water and Delvin said by Sept. 9 at 7 p.m. the sediment reached Rayleigh, just north of Kamloops.
“It was a lot of material to be able to travel that far down; I was getting reports early on that it was potentially coming from Blue River, but it turns out it was actually further upstream,” he added.
“I got two reports that it was from the Pyramid Drainage, which is, as I understand, 20 to 30km north of Blue River and that was subsequently confirmed.”
The reports also confirmed it was a natural event that caused the sediment to run into the river and by that time things had started returning to normal near Vavenby.
Once the sediment started dropping significantly in the river the TNRD started a flushing program to try and flush out as much of that sediment from the water distribution system as it could.
“We haven’t quite yet taken the boil water notice off; that has to be improved by Interior Health, but we hope to do that soon,” Delvin said late last week.
“We appreciate the people’s patience when these sorts of things happen. They are outside of the control of the utility and we do our best to minimize impact and return the system as quickly as we can to normal.”
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