Urgent! Flooding information.
Sunday morning, June 22, 2024 – Let’s start with the question you are asking, and that is “can we take showers and do laundry?” Also, some restaurants also voluntarily closed, and large industrial users such as AGP reduced consumption. The short answer is Yes. Please do the bare minimum. Our flows are still 15 to 18 times normal. We are turning a positive corner, yet we ask that you continue to conserve as much as possible and try to avoid putting water down the drain. Yesterday 6/22, between the sewer plant and bypassing, we moved 12-15m gallons of water. This is epic considering we normally process 800,000g of effluent daily. This doesn’t include all the popped manhole covers where water was just coming out. Reminder to please make sure sumps and roof drains are not connected to the sewer.
The Sheldon Fire Company performed a home-saving task yesterday and last night with helping on 11th St by Tanks and by Lewis Drug. Without them, we may have had hundreds of more homes with back-up.
Six customers are without water due to the Floyd River’s impact on our 10” water line on the north side of Hwy 18 west of Western Ave/McKinley. Today the Public Works Dept, Sheldon’s Farmer’s Market (Dave Vande Brake) and Sheldon Fire Co will undertake one of the more innovative projects in City history by using 3,000 feet of fire transfer hose provided by partnering fire departments (Ashton, Hospers and Sanborn) to reconnect water to the Sheldon Motel, NW Iowa Community College, Tradewinds Apartments, and several homes. Three are in City Limits, three are not. All six are important to us. One of these homes has more than 10 people from Rock Valley who lost their homes, so while this issue affects a small number of customers and it is time / resource intensive, it is a crucial project. We do not know when it will be energized but we home by tomorrow. These 6 customers will be on a boil advisory. To be clear the rest of Sheldon is NOT on a boil advisory, but we ask you to PLEASE continue to conserve water.
Just a reminder of our emergency City Council meeting at 4:30p tomorrow, Monday, 6/24. Agenda and updates can be found here. Further notes:
One average residential sump pump can pump 25 gallons a minute, which is 36,000 gallons a day. Disconnect it now from your sanitary sewer and run it into the yard or storm sewer. Same goes for roof drains.
The system is severely stressed and the possibility of sewer back up is real. You can help reduce this risk for yourself and your neighbors by ensuring your sump pumps and roof drains are NOT discharging into the sanitary sewer system.
See also this excerpt from City Code 95.04:
No person shall do, or allow, any of the following:
- Surface Run-Off or Groundwater. Connect a roof downspout, sump pump, exterior foundation drain, areaway drain, or other source of surface run-off or groundwater to a building sewer or building drain that is connected directly or indirectly to a public sanitary sewer.
Also you’ll want to talk to your insurance agent to verify your sewer backup coverage. On a related note, ask your insurance agent about insurance for water and sewer line breaks (doesn’t guarantee coverage regarding a back-up though). Re the lines themselves, the City is also a partner of HomeServe USA which is recommended by the National League of Cities as an option. Info on other flood related items, including our temporary residential tree dump on Western Ave, can be found at here.
