Lewiston's priorities: Maintaining fire protection, drinking water
May 2—A barn once caught fire at 5 a.m. on a day when the Lewiston Orchards Irrigation District allowed residents with even addresses to water some days and odd addresses to water on other days.
A battalion chief at the time, Lewiston Fire Chief Travis Myklebust, had to bring in tankers because fire hydrant pressure had dropped so low at that prime irrigation hour he wasn't getting a large enough volume of water to battle the blaze.
Maintaining fire protection and drinking water are the priorities in coming weeks while the city repairs one of its largest reservoirs, Lewiston Public Works Director Dustin Johnson told the town's elected officials at a Monday meeting.
Lewiston city councilor Jim Kleeburg was absent for a medical reason.
The present system with irrigation restrictions that go into effect today allows the Lewiston Fire Department to battle fires in the same way it did before High Reservoir failed Jan. 18, Myklebust said.
The restrictions ban use of automated irrigation for most city of Lewiston water users, but allow manual watering with devices such as hoses with on/off attachments to preserve trees and gardens.
"If we don't have adequate fire flow and we get a large fire, it's going to jump so fast, we're not going to lose a home, we're going to lose neighborhoods," Myklebust said.
Myklebust's and Johnson's presentation came at the end of a more than three-hour work session after more than 10 citizens expressed frustration about the restrictions.
Many asked for the city to hasten the repair of the broken reservoir by redirecting resources to the problem.
They also pushed city officials to consider permitting all city water customers to have at least one day a week where they were allowed to water with automated irrigation systems by making the ban apply to different groups in the affected area on different days of the week.
The repair for the reservoir is expected to be done in July, Johnson said.
"Money does not solve this right now," he said. "It's the availability of the goods and manufacturing them."
The city is going to fix the reservoir by installing a liner in it, removing the existing roof and adding a floating lid, which is scheduled to start being made in June, Johnson said.
The repair is anticipated to cost $2.4 million, last more than 20 years and allow the restored reservoir to meet the same demand for water that it did before the rupture.
The city identified the solution after reviewing what happened the day the reservoir was breached, Johnson said.
A warning system failed and the reservoir was overflowing when staff arrived, he said. Earthen embankments were undermined and a portion of the reservoir wall failed damaging the roof, he said.
Since the disaster, the city used ground-penetrating radar and didn't find any leaks, Johnson said.
The city opted for a blanket irrigation ban instead of one that applies to some customers certain days of the week because of how fragile the system is in its present configuration, with High Reservoir cut off from the city's other water infrastructure, he said.
Previously 2-foot diameter transmission lines carried water from High Reservoir to Normal Hill. Now water from wells on Nez Perce Grade and the Elks Addition have been redirected to that area through 8-inch pipes that weren't designed for that, Johnson said.
Limiting watering to manual, not automated devices makes it easier for the city to halt irrigation entirely if something happens, he said.
"With the hand-watering restrictions only, we can get out and say turn it off, something happened, or there's too much demand, turn it off," Johnson said.
City staff will analyze the system on a daily basis and it's possible the rules would be relaxed, Johnson said.
And some stopgap measures might be deployed such as trucking water from low-lying parts of Lewiston not included in the ban to higher areas such as Lewis-Clark State College's Harris Field, he said.
Williams may be contacted at ewilliam@lmtribune.com or (208) 848-2261.
