Taps flowing in Merrill  

H&N Staff Reporter

July 3, 2010

   But officials on Friday warned city residents not to drink it until required public health testing is completed. It should be done by Monday.

   The problem was fixed Friday afternoon after 80 feet of new pipe was screwed to the top of an existing pipe, pushing it down 150 feet into the 1,000-foot deep well. By 3 p.m., the wires were connected and the switch turned on, bringing water up from the ground, into the tower, and out to residents.

   “We are ecstatic,” said City Marshal Brain Bicknell. “We couldn’t be any happier that the plans are coming together so well.”  

   Faucets ran dry late Tuesday, after a five to 15-foot plunge in the aquifer dropped water below reach of the pipe that ran from the well to the city’s water tower.     

   Over the course of a few days, the tower emptied.

   When the water system first failed, officials planned on extending a 70-foot pipe another 40 feet into the ground. By Thursday, they decided on an 80-foot pipe.

   Bob Bunyard, owner of Klamath Pump Center, said the pipe installation “came off like clockwork.”

   Bunyard and his men screwed the pipe on in eight 10 foot sections. They lowered each section through the roof of the well shed, and then screwed it tight with a “big chain wrench — and strength and ignorance,” Bunyard said.  

   Once the water was flowing, the system had to be filled, flushed, chlorinated, and flushed again. Now officials are in the process of conducting required water tests; residents shouldn’t drink the water until they’re finished, Bicknell said.

   The state health department mandates that municipalities conduct tests for bacteria like E.coli, which thrives any time there’s a break in a water system’s operations.

   Meanwhile, people may flush their toilets, and after 8 a.m. today use the water to clean, though public health officials recommend people boil water first to kill any potential bacteria.

   “The city of Merrill is so grateful to everybody,” Bicknell said. “We had a pretty big thing happen here — people went to bed one night and didn’t have water when they woke up — but there was water available to them first thing, different agencies came together …

   “When all is said and done, everybody has been incredible.”