A water conservation notice that went up early this morning on the Regional District of Kootenay Boundary (RDKB) website has been lifted.
The notice was also posted on the City of Rossland and other municipalities websites, asking residents to conserve water, especially wastewater. The was due to a pipe failure of the Regional Intercepter on the Old Trail Bridge.
Alan Stanley, RDKB director of environmental services, said that a coupling had come apart sometime yesterday and so the pipe that transfers wastewater across the river to East Trail had to be turned off.
"We had to shut down the flow through that pipe," Stanley said. This lead to the conservation notice. "We asked that people use as little water as possible."
As a result of the shutdown, all wastewater from Rossland, Warfield, West Trail, Oasis and Rivervale was discharging directly into the Columbia River.
Stanley said the RDKB reported a maximum of 5,500 cubic metres of wastewater that could have been discharged, to the Provincial Emergency Program.
"That was designed as an absolute maximum that we could have reached, we are now recalculating that, now that we have actual records of what went through the system," he noted.
The repair was complete just before 1 p.m. today and the system is operational again.
Stanley said the RDKB is currently in the process of notifying municipalities that the notice has been lifted.