City of Republic, Mo., asks residents to conserve water - KY3

City of Republic, Mo., asks residents to conserve water

Order comes after a well failure Tuesday morning

REPUBLIC, Mo. (KY3) - The city of Republic’s water system consists of four wells, three towers, and a ground storage tank to provide water to more than 19,000 people.

Well number three, next to Republic Middle School, provides 25% to 30% of the pumping capacity for the city. Garrett Brickner, assistant BUILDS administrator for the City of Republic, said capacity dropped Tuesday morning.

“Early this morning, we got a low-level alarm that usually tells us there’s something wrong,” Brickner said. “As soon as we got the error message, we found the well stopped working.”

The contractor responsible for the well arrived at the site Tuesday afternoon and started taking the pump out to determine what exactly was wrong. The outage timee could range between 48 hours and up to a week as it depends on what exactly needs to be fixed or replaced.

That has prompted the City of Republic to put out an order asking people to conserve water until the problem is fixed. Brickner said no one is being left out in that request that went out Tuesday morning.

“We’re asking everyone to help out,” Brickner said. “Citizens, businesses, our parks department is actually shutting down a lot of their watering operations. The city itself is a huge user of water. So, we’re cutting back as much as we can as well.”

As for the safety of the water, Brickner said there are no concerns about the water quality after the well shut down. Plus, the water system was designed with redundancy in mind.

“Our system is robust enough that the other pumps and wells can all pick up and cover it,” Brickner said. “It just reduces the amount of water that we can put into the system at one time.”

While the city isn’t declaring this an emergency situation and while the supply of water is still in good shape, the order that went out Tuesday morning still encourages people to take simple steps to conserve water until the well is up and running again.

“I know people take a lot of pride in their lawns and stuff like that,” Brickner said. “Just cut back on watering, cut down on doing laundry for a day or two until we can get through this. Anything helps.”

KY3 will continue to monitor the situation and post any updates on the well or the order as they become available. For other ways to cut back on water use, the EPA has you covered on their WaterSense page.

They ask residents and businesses to practice water conservation measures:

- Minimize washing clothes
- Minimize washing dishes
- Minimize showers/baths
- Minimize irrigating lawns
- Minimize filling pools

The failure at the well does not impact the quality of the water.

Questions? Contact the BUILDS Department in the city at 417-732-3150.

To report a correction or typo, please email digitalnews@ky3.com

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