Contractor Breaks Broadford Water Main

1 February 2007

Today a private contractor laying a stormwater pipe in White Street broke a large 200 mm diameter water main, resulting in a significant loss of water and dirty water.

Goulburn Valley Water’s Director-Technical Services Mr Allen Gale said that the contractor was doing private work when the water main was hit in White Street.  “A Total of 1,000,000 litres of precious water was lost and it also created a lot of dirty water.”

“As soon as our staff were notified of the break, they rushed down to Broadford to repair the main,” said Mr Gale.  “The repair work took approximately 3 hours to complete.”

Mr Gale said that in addition to the repair to the main, Authority staff had to flush the mains to restore water quality.  “Most of the flushing will be completed by the end Thursday 1 February.  However, there may be some pockets within the town that the routine flushing has not reached and we ask that customers contact us on 1800 45 45 00 to report these if they persist after Friday.”

“We apologise for the inconvenience this has caused our customers, especially Nestle, but it was out of our control.”

Mr Gale said that over the past week localised sections of the town had been experiencing some dirty water.  This was due to the Authority conserving water during the water restrictions, by not undertaking routine flushing of water mains.  “To save water, we decided that the routine flushing program would be put on hold and that mains flushing would only occur where and when there was a dirty water issue,” he said.  “Flushing of the areas reporting dirty water has been undertaken over the last few days.”

“We hope that our customers understand our reasoning and request that if they do experience dirty water to contact our customer service centre on Free Call 1800 45 45 00,” said Mr Gale.  “I would like to assure our customers that if they do experience dirty water, it is still safe to use.”

Authorised By L.J. Gleeson 104-110 Fryers Street Shepparton