Since Saturday, the municipality of L’Île-d’Anticosti has been experiencing repeated water outages on its water supply network, which were initially attributed to the drought. But ultimately, it is an electrical problem that is to blame.
On Saturday, in a message published on Facebook, the municipality of L’Île-d’Anticosti announced that the water table that supplies its water supply network had reached such a low level that it was forced to interrupt water distribution on its network.
“In the history of the municipality, this situation has only occurred once in the past,” she said in a statement.
Since then, periods of interruption and resumption of water distribution have followed one another, without anyone knowing when the situation would return to normal. In the meantime, a non-potable water distribution system had been set up to meet the urgent needs of the population during the interruptions.
But on Tuesday, Mathieu Gravel, the municipality’s general manager, finally announced in a message published on Facebook that it was in fact an “electrical” problem with the pumping system, which was confirmed by an electrician.
“At no time was the water level in our wells the cause of the service interruptions,” he said. The water level there is approximately 7 metres above the pumping level, according to measurements taken Tuesday morning. “We are therefore sorry to have conveyed this erroneous information on Saturday morning,” he added.
The municipality is still monitoring the situation closely and hopes to return to normal by Tuesday evening. A one-time opening of the water distribution network is planned from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m., which could continue if the situation stabilizes. In the meantime, it asks its citizens to continue to save water as much as possible.