File photo (Image credit: CFJC Today).

By Aaron Schulze

Clearwater Water Shortage

Critical water shortage in effect for Clearwater following lengthy power outage

Aug 22, 2024 | 11:44 AM

CLEARWATER, B.C. — The District of Clearwater says there’s a critical water shortage due a power outage that began at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday (Aug. 21).

In a Voyent Alert! Notification Thursday morning, the district is asking residents to stop all non-essential water use.

Clearwater Mayor Merlin Blackwell says the district’s two major well systems runs on BC Hydro power. Additionally, a pair of backup generators the district purchased are stuck in customs.

Blackwell told CFJC Today he received an email from BC Hydro Wednesday afternoon that power would be shut off for multiple North Thompson communities for approximately six hours to fix broken power poles.

However, Blackwell says BC Hydro didn’t have a pre-check to see if they could get equipment up to fix the poles.

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“They shut off the power and now we found out they need bulldozers to go up there and basically create a road and drag the equipment up to the site of the breakage, which they couldn’t do until daylight [Thursday],” Blackwell says. “Why didn’t they communicate that out so the community can make emergency plans… the Voyent! Alert that went out for water, we would have done that yesterday evening.”

While communication with BC Hydro was an issue for the District of Clearwater, Blackwell says the outage is part of a decades-long problem of not having a looped power line through the North Thompson.

“We’re basically a giant extension chord you can trip over and the power goes out,” Blackwell says. “We have a major industrial project that’s supposed to start up here in a few years – the Taseko Yellowhead Copper Mine – with no power source for it. There are a lot of good reasons and history to tell BC Hydro to loop the line up and down the North Thompson valley, but nobody has taken action on it.”

As of publication, BC Hydro estimates that power will be restored in Clearwater at 1:00 p.m. Thursday. Blackwell says it takes five or six hours before the district can regenerate what’s needed to be held in reservoirs. Although he adds they were initially told `power would be restored at around 1:00 a.m. and they can’t count on planning around estimated times.