Mercer Island City Council and city officials revisited the recent water crisis, and discussed how Islanders played an immense role in topping off the situation, during a recap at an April 25 hybrid meeting.
Through massive water conservation efforts by residents and businesses, the city dodged a far worse circumstance than it experienced, according to City Manager Jessi Bon.
“Truly, you all helped us get through this emergency,” said Bon, who added that conservation included water-dependent businesses refraining from using pressure washers and carpet-cleaning equipment.
Other key components in ending the emergency were the chamber of commerce getting the word out about the situation to businesses, QFC donating 200-plus cases of water for distribution to the community, the Mercer Island School District operating on a two-hour delay one day in order to help conserve water during their lunch preparations and more.
According to a previous Reporter article, after Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) crews completed emergency repairs on a pair of faulty valves during the morning and afternoon of April 20, water began flowing through the pipes of Mercer Island’s supply line for the first time in several days. The issue arose during SPU’s planned work on the system that provides water to the city.
This failure “prevented water from coming across the bridge and refilling our two four-million-gallon reservoir tanks here on the Island,” said the city’s Chief of Operations Jason Kintner during an April 19 webinar.
On the morning of April 22, city officials lifted the water emergency as levels rose overnight to surpass 20 feet in the tanks.
SPU’s work on the water supply pipeline began at midnight on April 17 and was set to consist of a pair of 44-hour shutdowns during construction when the city would utilize water from its tanks, which would be refilled above a certain capacity after the first phase of the project before the second phase began.
“From the city’s perspective, these shutdowns do happen occasionally. There was nothing to think that anything would happen differently than they had done before,” Kintner said at the April 25 meeting, adding that the city’s utility board and public were apprised of the scheduled shutdowns.
The city tries to schedule the shutdowns, which require extensive planning and coordination between utilities, in the winter or early spring months when the peak demand is lower and also around the city’s capital construction projects, Kintner said.
Bon said that when city officials learned of the situation on April 18, they alerted their emergency management team that evening and first dealt with fire suppression, which included activating an extra engine, notifying the NORCOM 911 dispatch center, obtaining two 3,000-gallon-capacity mutual aid fire tenders at both stations and more.
During the late morning of April 19, the city sent a CodeRed alert through the opt-in system and asked Islanders to begin conserving water (Bon also issued an emergency proclamation on this matter).
“Our projections showed us potentially running out of water on Thursday or Friday (April 20-21) in our reservoir tanks and so we needed everyone to pull down use, which they did,” said Bon, adding that a boil water advisory was averted.
Bon noted that council will receive an official report of the water crisis at a forthcoming meeting and a discussion will be held regarding solutions to keep a similar situation from occurring again.
CITY HALL UPDATE
Mercer Island City Hall remains closed as city staff continues to work with environmental safety experts after the discovery of asbestos-contaminated tiles in the boiler room. The building was temporarily shuttered on April 17 to ensure the safety of staff and visitors.
“The reason for that closure is because those broken tiles are located in a room where we have one of two air-handling units for city hall,” Bon said during a city council meeting on April 25, which was a rescheduled gathering on Zoom after the cancellation of council’s April 18 meeting that was planned to occur at city hall.
Bon noted that city employees were preparing to engage in maintenance work when they located the tiles, which were confirmed to contain asbestos. While safety testing and remediation in the boiler room continues and the building is cleaned, city hall is expected to be closed until mid-May, according to the city, adding that police and Public Works response will continue per usual.
