Waste Not, Want Not . . . Water

This afternoon, the City of Hudson issued the following water advisory.

The public water supply for the City of Hudson requires that raw (untreated) water is captured and collected into the Churchtown Reservoir. Raw water is delivered to the city via a 16” cast iron water main that was installed in the early 1900s.

As part of our annual maintenance of this main, the Hudson Water department sends a poly-pig with bristles through the main to clean the inside of any tuberculation. The department has conducted this operation for decades with the occasional issue.

This year, for an unknown reason the poly-pig became stuck in the water main. Several attempts to use higher flows to dislodge the pig proved unsuccessful and further attempts are unlikely as the process consumes filtered potable water from our tank.

Currently, we are excavating a site near one of our valves to gain access to the main. We have also asked our neighbors from the Town of Greenport to use their sewer camera to make further investigation from an alternate site. We believe we have located the poly-pig, and when it is found, we will undertake all necessary actions to excavate and remove the pig.

This process is expected to go well into the night and quite possibly continue into Wednesday.

The tank is down 20% and will continue to drop as we are unable to produce water at this time. Accordingly, we ask all residents and businesses to conserve water wherever possible. Please refrain from any nonessential uses like watering lawns, flowers, filling swimming pools, or washing cars, etc.

At the point that our supply continues to drop we will prepare to initiate our back-up water supply, as well as investigate other short-term measures to ensure the quality and availability of our public water supply.