The city of Burlington lifted a water conservation notice for some city and Colchester residents Thursday morning, two days after it was announced.
Tuesday’s advisory affected customers who receive a water bill from Burlington Water Resources or Colchester Fire District 2, which the city also serves. The reservoir and tanks serve about 10,000 customers in Burlington and about 2,800 in Malletts Bay.
“The cause of the conservation notice was the booster pump failure on the water main that supplies the Colchester water tank,” Chapin Spencer, the city’s director of public works, wrote in an email Thursday. “Without the booster pumps, our regular supply lines to the tower could not keep up with the higher water demand that we saw during the heat wave.”
The alert was sent midday Tuesday after the water in a Colchester tank fell 2 feet below the minimum desired level, Spencer said earlier this week. On Thursday morning the drinking water level was back to normal and the alert was lifted.
“With our customer’s water conservation efforts, now both the Colchester water tank and the Burlington reservoir are replenished and up to normal levels,” Spencer wrote.
The two booster pumps feeding the Colchester water tank that failed are approximately 25 years old, said Spencer, who oversees upgrades to Burlington’s aging infrastructure. One is fixed, and despite significant maintenance, the other pump is not online yet.
“We do exercise the pumps weekly, but moving forward we are now going to exercise the pumps for a longer duration to more fully test them,” Spencer said in the email.
