Town works on solution to water blockages

There's no shortage of water supply for St. Anthony.

Mayor Ern Simms said the trouble is the ice, slob and an intake pump too narrow to service a community of 2,500, particularly when the demand for water increases to service the fish and shrimp plants.

This problem reached maddening proportions when two Fridays over the past month residents awoke to sputtering taps which coughed a couple sad drops.

A morning or an entire day without water is common at certain points during the fall, before St. Anthony Pond is completely frozen over, Mayor Simms said, adding that the most recent water outage was the result of extreme winds pushing the ice and slob across the pond toward the intake valve.

"The large chunk of ice that was pulled out of the wet well was frightening - a 12 inch diameter piece of ice came through," he said of the blockage removed by public works.

"When we lost it last time, we weren't expecting it would be so long. We didn't realize we were going to have that problem, because the pond was frozen over, but two days before that we had 100-plus kilometre winds and the ice on the other side of the pond, chunks of ice and slob, got under the surface and was sucked into the intake."

The Town of St. Anthony applied for water works funding from the Department of Municipal Affairs more than a year ago.

The town is calling for funds to expand the current 12-inch intake.

"We've been asking for money for that to try to upgrade the facilities that are there," Mayor Simms said. "The most recent response we got about a month ago was, 'Well, the program has changed, so you have to redo your application. That's not satisfactory for us, but we have to follow protocol from the provincial government."

But the problem is more troubling than households being without water for a few hours.

Water outages can also pose serious complications in the case of a fire in town and with dialysis units.

"That's a very serious complication, that dialysis has to be cancelled on that day," Mayor Simms said. "The hospital is one of our biggest concerns. When you got residents without water, you got problems."

The Town is left with no other option than to wait for the provincial government to give them a "yes answer," Mayor Simms said.

"The pond is full of water; there's no shortage of water at all, St. Anthony Pond is full, it's running over the exit there, but the point of it is we can't go digging up pipes this time of year," he said.

"We're working to do what we can, and we're hoping that Mother Nature will get on our side and resolve this problem for us until next year. Next year, we're going to do something about this, it's got to be fixed. And hopefully before this spring we will have our answer so we can get the funds to move ahead and get the work done."