Evergreen water lifts boil advisory

The Evergreen Water and Sewer District on Friday, Sept. 2 lifted a boil water advisory for its system.

The district received results from water testing that show there is no evidence of bacteria in the drinking water. A boil advisory was issued on Monday, Aug. 29 after possible contamination of the water following an equipment failure.

Evergreen temporarily chlorinated the water and flushed the system on Wednesday and followed up with testing of the water. The district worked with the Montana Department of Environmental Quality on the issue.

Cindy Murray, general manager of the district, issued an apology to customers for the inconvenience caused by the situation.

“We take the safety of our water supply very seriously and have worked tirelessly to recover the system from this emergency condition,” she said in a statement. “Although this was an equipment failure we did not cause and could not anticipate, we will make changes as a result of this incident, including an expanded customer notification system.”

The district provides water to about 3,200 customers.

A piping failure was discovered on Sunday, Aug. 28 at two of the district’s water holding tanks. The flooding that resulted from the pipe leak caused electrical shorts to the controls that monitor the levels of the water tanks, and thus caused the tanks to not be refilled once they were depleted by the normal system demand.

Because the system was depleted of water, there was concern that the water could be contaminated with bacteria from backflow, according to the district.

Repairs have been made to the system, Murray notes, and a project is planned to completely replace the equipment that malfunctioned causing the incident. While waiting for the system upgrade that is expected to be completed in mid-2023, the district plans to install redundant controls and redundant emergency notification equipment to avoid another incident such as the one that occurred.

Customers can sign up for emergency notifications from the district, by visiting their website at

www.evergreenwaterdistrict.com and clicking on the red icon that says Sign up for Alerts.