By Kevin J. Sabo
For the Advance
Castor Town council heard good news and bad news where it came to the municipal water and gas systems during the Sept. 13 meeting.
To begin, the bad news.
“We have another water break,” said Chief Administrative Officer Christopher Robblee.
“We believe we’ve had a break for the last four months.”
The leak started slowly, however, over the last few days the water losses have escalated, with the Town losing 100 cubic metres of water every two days.
To put that number in perspective, the average residence in Castor can use up to 13 cubic metres per month before being charged for additional water.
“Water losses are quite high,” said Robblee.
Despite the large volume of the leak, Robblee doesn’t believe the repair will be a quick one due to the suspected location of the leak.
The leak is suspected to be in the area around the old water treatment plant, an area rife with active and abandoned water lines. An additional complication is that the leak has not made it to surface.
To attempt to locate the leak, a line locating crew was brought in, and identified several possible locations for the leak. Since the leak has not made it to surface, which is an easy confirmation of the leak, crews need to ‘daylight’ the locations, digging down to visually assess the pipe.
“We are working on it, but it’s not going to be a quick one,” said Robblee.
“(The crews) have a whole bunch more daylighting work (to do).”
Water losses through the end of August sit around 27 per cent.
For the good news, the gains in the municipality-owned gas system continue to slowly grow.
As of the end of August, the Town-owned gas system is showing a 5.3 per cent gain, indicating that the municipality is generating a small profit off the system.