GREENSTONE – Residents of Geraldton are being asked to reduce or limit their water usage until further notice due to a major water break affecting the water tower reservoir.
“There’s a main water line that runs from the water treatment plant north of Geraldton up to the water tower — that’s a 12-inch line,” said Mayor James McPherson. “They’ve found a break in it. So, what that means is that pumping the water from the water treatment plant to the tower… it’s not all going into the tower.”
McPherson said the water tower is currently “half full.”
Before any work can be done and a crew can dig to find the breakage, the tower needs to be filled with as much water as possible.
“Then, we’re going to have to shut down that line,” said McPherson, “which means we’re going to need to run the community off of the tower.”
The mayor said that reducing water usage will allow crews more time to reach the breakage and make any necessary repairs.
“They need to make arrangements for some excavators, for some big pumps, to minimize the time… they haven’t even dug down to it to determine severity of the break – they know they’ve got a major break and we’ve got to deal with it.”
At this point, it is unknown what exactly caused the breakage to occur.
A rough timeline could not be given for when the water main will be functional again but the municipality is working on it, with further updates to be released over the course of the day.
In the meantime, filling the water tower remains a key priority.
