The water is now safe to drink in Devils Lake. This comes after a pipe supplying the area with water burst on Monday, leaving a huge area from Devils Lake to Langdon with low water pressure and potentially contaminated water.
Mike Grafsgaard, Public Works Director for Devils Lake says they isolated the rural cities from Devils Lake’s system before they could be contaminated, but Devils Lake was put under a boiling order.
"Because the system had lost pressure, if there were some contaminants that had entered the system, if there was some bacteria or something that had entered the system, boiling the water then would disinfect it before anyone would be drinking that water."
Grafsgaard says they were able to get water back to the area, but it was only yesterday evening when they got their tests back saying the water is safe to drink.
Grafsgaard says the burst pipe was likely due to Monday’s frigid temperatures and Devil’s Lake’s 70-year-old pipes. The Public Works Department still has work to do getting the hospital back on the city’s water supply and fixing other problems in the water distribution system.
"There's a handful of frozen pipes in town; we're working on them. We have a couple of other minor water leaks that we're working on, and tomorrow it is our goal to excavate that section of pipe that has broken and get those repairs made."
The boil order has been lifted for the area.