Last week, the town’s water worries went from bad to worse.
On Tuesday, July 8, Public Works Director Tim Lippert reported to the Norwood Water Commission that the treatment plant was racing to keep up with the demands of a thirsty town during a hot, dry spell. Lippert said that the plant treated 400,000 gallons in a single day, and that supplies were so depleted that low water alarms were going off as often as once a week. Just one day later, another alarm alerted Lippert to a leak in the water system’s main line.
Lippert and his crew worked from 8 p.m. Wednesday night until 6 a.m. Thursday morning repairing the line, only to have it rupture more violently two hours later, at 8 a.m. Thursday.  Those repairs took until 7 p.m. that evening, while water users oblivious to the problems continued to draw on the system.
“The second time it exploded, and was sprinkling down water,” said Lippert. “It drained our tanks right down. We’re really struggling to come back.”
The problems had just begun for the beleaguered crew. This weekend, there were more technical troubles at the plant itself. The reservoir pump failed, said Lippert, and its failure caused a series of other problems that the plant employees had to resolve to keep the system running.
“We had mechanical problems at the plant, and we can’t make water while we’re working on the treatment plant,” said Lippert.
Last week’s water line ruptures were in roughly the same place that the line burst this winter. This winter’s break occurred in January, in below-zero temperatures. The breaks are happening on the 45Y road, between Highway 145 and the 43Y road —  a problematic stretch, according to Lippert. He said that the line was installed in 1977, a plastic pipe embedded in a rocky area, and now it’s prone to bursting.
Lippert said that even though there is a shortage of treated water, this winter’s copious snowfall has supplied the town with plenty of untreated water.
“As far as our raw water supply, it’s quite abundant. Treating the water, that’s our bottleneck. We have limited capacity,” said Lippert.
Still, residents and water users are using the treated water at a faster-than-usual pace, watering lawns and gardens that are suffering in the July heat. Lippert is hopeful that people will use water conservatively.
“Last month we made over 9 million gallons of water. People are using a lot of water,” said Lippert. “People should conserve water where they can … no outside watering during the heat of the day, limit your watering to 15-minute sets. Just common sense stuff.”
Norwood’s water system capacity has been the subject of recent scrutiny. Developer Daniel Tucker applied to the town, asking to annex 50 acres and enough home sites to double the size of the town. The Norwood Water Commission asked engineers to determine if the system was capable of serving the development, and learned last month that the system is already using 90 percent of its capacity, with just 83 taps in reserve.
Members of the commission wondered at that time if they might have to put a moratorium on the sale of water taps, but decided last week that they could continue to sell them on a case-by-case basis. Water taps cost $12,000, and the water commission is in need of capital to keep improving the system so that it can produce more treated water.