Lewiston 'within days' of lifting restrictions

Lewiston’s irrigation prohibitions could end within days, bringing relief to thousands of water customers who have devoted hours each week attempting to keep their lawns green.

“We are within days of lifting the restrictions,” said Dustin Johnson, Lewiston public works director. “At this point, I can’t lock down a day.”

The city has refilled High Reservoir and is reconnecting it to the municipal water system. The reservoir, one of the city’s largest, has been offline since it failed on Jan. 18.

The reduction in the city’s water supply prompted the city to ban automated irrigation for most of its water customers, which started in early May.  

In recent months, the city has removed the reservoir’s roof and replaced it with a floating lid. It’s also repaired the broken wall of the reservoir and installed a new liner.

“We have multiple redundant alarm systems and a new oversized overflow discharge pipe,” Johnson said.

On Tuesday, the city released about 40% of the water from the reservoir after it was refilled, partly because chlorine levels rose too high during a disinfection process, Johnson said.

The water was released through the city’s stormwater system of pipes and open ditches that lead to the Clearwater River in the Sunset Addition, he said.

“We had our stormwater and street guys out monitoring it,” Johnson said.

The city took water samples Friday for bacteria tests that are expected to be completed Saturday, he said.

If water passes the tests and the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality gives permission, a contractor will begin testing pumps Monday in the city’s new water treatment plant that sends water to the reservoir.

The pumps are part of the upgrade at the water treatment plant and had not been installed when the reservoir failed.

On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, the city will be reversing the changes it made in its system when it disconnected the reservoir from the rest of the water system.

In the latter part of the week, crews will be running tests to be sure the water is moving around the system correctly.

“We’ll be keeping a close eye on it to see how the system responds when it returns back to normal,” Johnson said. “A lot of it is, these components haven’t run in six months and some of them are brand new.”

Despite all of the challenges, the city hasn’t encountered the worst case scenario of having inadequate water pressure for fire protection, which is the reason the irrigation restrictions were put in place.

That was true even when consumption hit 111% of the city’s usage goal on July 15, a Saturday,  when it was replenishing the water in the reservoir.

City crews monitored emergency frequencies and would have stopped refilling the reservoir if a fire erupted, he said.

Williams may be contacted at ewilliam@lmtribune.com or (208) 848-2261.