The city of Bryan lost much of its capacity to produce and distribute water for about 20 hours on Thursday.
That did not result in conservation requests being asked of water customers in Bryan and the Wickson Creek district.
There was an alert sent to customers of the Wellborn water district. According to Wellborn’s website, they were saved from running out of water by customers who turned off their sprinklers Thursday night.
Bryan public works director Jayson Barfknecht told WTAW News that one of two large pumps stopped working Thursday around two a.m. That resulted in moving to the other large pump, which worked for about three hours before it stopped. That resulted in moving to a smaller pump station and notifying Wellborn and Wickson Creek that they would be receiving less water.
Normal production resumed Thursday around 10 p.m. following temporary repairs. That allowed more water from Bryan being released to the suburban districts.
Barfknecht says once water consumption falls, permanent repairs will be made to the large pumps. That is not expected until this fall.
Bryan public works director Jayson Barfknecht provided WTAW News the chronology of what happened:
“Around 2 a.m. on Thursday we had one of two large pumps drop offline. We moved to our other large pump. It started. Ran for a while and dropped offline. Operator got it to restart. It ran for about 3 hours and dropped offline again. So far we have diagnosed the problem to electrical components within the plant site. BTU staff helped us reconfigure the electrical components and make a temporary repair in place of the failed components. The issue was not a BTU controlled component. Pump was back on around 9:45 p.m./10:00 p.m. Thursday night.
With the loss of the large pump we were running additional pumps at our smaller pump station. These pumps did not match the pumping capabilities lost with the big pump.
City notified Wellborn and Wickson at 1:30 p.m. Thursday we were experiencing trouble. I told them I would let them know around 5 p.m. if we would need to lower their supply from us. At 5:30 p.m. I asked them to reduce their flow to 500 gpm (gallons per minute).
At 10 p.m. I informed Wellborn they could increase their flow to 800 gpm based on communication with Wellborn staff on their levels. During the communication with Wellborn staff, I understood at the rate they were losing water that they could be empty by 4 a.m. Friday without additional supply from us. After watching our levels for 2 hours, at midnight I let them increase again another 500 gpm. At midnight I also notified Wickson if they needed to increase their flow to 800 gpm from 500 gpm they could.”