EVERETT — The spigot at Snohomish County’s main drinking water plant will be turned off for as long as 24 hours starting Saturday morning, but officials say customers shouldn’t notice a thing.
That’s because Everett Utilities and other area water purveyors have enough clean drinking water in storage to keep taps on for more than a half-million people for at least three full days.
“We have full confidence that it’s not going to be a big deal,” said Kate Reardon, city spokeswoman.
The temporary shutdown of Everett Utility’s drinking water filtration plant near Sultan is related to construction of a new 6.7 million gallon concrete reservoir known as a clear well.
The $20 million project will supplement an existing clear well, essentially doubling the city’s capacity to store treated water and allow the utility more flexibility in the future to make needed repairs without taking the water plant offline.
The shutdown is expected to start at 4 a.m. Saturday and last until 4 a.m. Sunday. Reardon said construction work will likely take considerably less time.
Everett Utilities supplies treated drinking water to 80 percent of Snohomish County, including Marysville, Lynnwood and Edmonds.
It sells water to eight water systems, the largest in terms of demand being the Alderwood Water District. Others include water utilities serving Marysville, Monroe, Mukilteo, Snohomish and Silver Lake.
In November, a shutdown of the water plant forced restaurants in north Snohomish to close because of a fear of bacterial contamination. The city asked customers to boil water because that portion of the city’s water system was believed to be vulnerable to a water outage or significant loss of water pressure, making the water potentially unhealthy to drink.
This time, Everett Utilities is not cutting off water to the northern potion of Snohomish.
Karen Latimer, the city of Snohomish’s public works manager, said some areas could experience slight pressure changes, but nothing that should cause alarm.
Everett’s drinking water plant is next to the Chaplain Reservoir, which is fed by the Spada Reservoir at the headwaters of the Sultan River, about 30 miles east of Everett.
Water that leaves Spada Reservoir first flows through the Snohomish County PUD’s Jackson Hydroelectric Plant to make electricity. The water then flows back through a three-mile-long pipe to Chaplain Reservoir. When the water reaches Chaplain Reservoir, some of the water is diverted and returned to the Sultan River to provide in-stream flow for fish.
Reporter David Chircop: 425-339-3429 or dchircop@heraldnet.com.
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