Ice And Intake Valves Complicate Lake Erie Water Delivery

A utility near Lake Erie struggled to deliver water because ice in the lake was blocking intake valves earlier this winter.

Several communities were alerted residents that they should save water.

"Nearly 200,000 water customers in Avon, Avon Lake, Medina [were] asked to take part in a voluntary water cut-back because of intake issues at the Avon Lake Water Regional Water Plant," ABC 5 reported.

WKYC broke down what happened.

"Think of the water intake plant as a pipe going through a big slushy drink. There's fluid down at the bottom but you're trying to pull it through all that ice. It's not easy to do and there could be problems," WKYC reported.

The utility alerted customers about the problems on Facebook.

"Customers: The weather has been making lake conditions difficult for us. At this point, we are asking customers to use a little less water, if possible. Ice is limiting what we are currently able to draw from the lake. We have workarounds in place and are implementing more. Thanks for your assistance," the post said.

Todd Danielson, manager of Avon Lake Regional Water, explained why this happened. "We're not asleep at the switch and we've made a lot of improvements and those improvements made it so that we're not in a state of emergency this year," he said, per WKYC.

The problems were resolved, and the utility is working on long-term fixes to prevent future issues. That includes a new backup tower, which is expected to be available next winter.

Avon Mayor Bryan Jensen noted improvements compared to the utility's response last year.

"The one thing we liked about this year over last year, they started right away," he said, per WKYC. "So as soon as they had the problems, they were getting more pumps laid out on the ice. They were doing some things that they weren't doing until the very last minute last year."