A state of emergency remains in place in Fort Frances.
Heavy rain led to the failure of a lift station near the Memorial Sports Centre and the flooding of several homes.
Spokesperson Patrick Briere says a request Saturday for residents to conserve water and the by-pass of wastewater at the treatment plant alleviated some pressure on the system.
“We are by-passing 50 litres per second, and we’re treating 200 litres per second through the plant. So that’s good news. It means the system is kind of catching up. The last 24 hours, 48 hours, have been good to us. The wet plan we used in 2014 that has been implemented since Friday night is working well,” says Briere.
The town also placed pumps in various areas of town to help move water. Their use has now ended.
A pump acquired from Thunder Bay was also put in place at the lift station Saturday night as a temporary solution.
Briere says they still have not been able to determine exactly what cause the problem.
“The dry tank is still flooded. There’s a plan for public works and operations staff to try to tackle that Monday, just so that we can start investigating what caused the issue at that lift station. And then once that’s done, we’ll have to make repairs and get some motors repaired and go from there,” says Briere.
The town is also still asking residents to conserve water as much as they can.
“Operations staff our maintaining the system, and water still flowing, but we still are asking residents in town to minimize their water usage into the sanitary sewer. We’re asking residents to keep their sump pumps discharged outside and not into the sanitary sewer. They can run them above ground to the storm, and that will flow it away for them. Just we’re trying to alleviate any extra pressure on this computer system at this time.”
Environment Canada reports about 70 millimetres of rain fell Friday and Saturday.
The Dryden area received more than 30 millimetres but no problems were reported by Public Works.
