A boil water alert remains in place for residents in the Darwin and Palmerston area, but there is no longer a directive to conserve water, after flash flooding impacted the Darwin River Dam’s pumps.Â
Earlier this week, unprecedented flash flooding damaged the pump system at the dam, which supplies most of Darwin’s water.
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With the area now heavily relying on bore water, a boil water alert was issued and residents and businesses were urged to conserve their water use.
Infrastructure Minister Bill Yan was at the Darwin River Dam pump station on Tuesday night, where a large team of operators managed to get a backup generator to the site to operate the pump.
John Pease says it was “a truly amazing effort” from his staff to get a second pump connected on Wednesday. (ABC News: Mitchell Abram)
“There’s more work to do but we’re making good progress,” he said.
Mr Yan said the next step was to fix the road to the dam so more backup generators could be brought in.
The dam usually operates with four pumps, and while the NT government said progress was being made on repairing those pumps, residents were urged to reduce their water usage as consumption was exceeding supply.
Darwin River Dam was pushed to 110 per cent capacity when the flash flooding impacted the pump site. (ABC News: Tristan Hooft)
With one pump online and running off a temporary generator, efforts turned to connecting a second pump to the overhead power.
Power and Water acting chief executive John Pease said with two pumps connected, that would provide enough output of water to exceed average consumption during the wet season.
By Wednesday afternoon, Mr Pease told ABC Radio Darwin the second pump was up and running.
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“This is breaking news, it was just confirmed to me on the way here that we’ve hit that milestone,” he said.
“In a truly amazing effort … they’ve now managed to connect a second pump.
“We’ve still got work to do to connect to a permanent source of power, but we’ve got the generator connected to two pumps.
Sudden flooding at Darwin River shocks residents
“With two running, we’re confident we’re producing enough water so we’re above our average level of consumption in the wet season.”
Mr Pease said crews had worked tirelessly through the night “in truly horrendous conditions”, constructing a 3-kilometre gravel road from a dirt track so a heavy semitrailer carrying equipment could cross.
The first trailer made it within 400 metres of the pump and bogged, so crews had to find an alternative solution in an on-site generator that they managed to repair and get running.
What does a boil water alert mean?
NT Health has issued the boil water alert, recommending using cooled boiled water or bottled water for:
Drinking Preparing food Preparing baby formula Brushing teethÂ
NT Health recommends boiling water by bringing it to a full rolling boil, until a continuous and rapid stream of air bubbles is produced in the pan or kettle.Â
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Chief health officer Paul Burgess said the alert was a precautionary measure until results from water sample tests came back.
“We are in unprecedented times with the failure of the Darwin River Dam pump that has led to Power and Water activating their emergency plans to activate bore fields at McMinns Lagoon and the Howard River,” he said.
Bottled water stocks at Darwin supermarkets have beet depleted. (ABC News: Matilda Colling)
“The concern was with those bore fields that they are close to residences that have septic tanks, and there is a possibility with a lot of water around in the wet season, a lot of water flowing, that the bore field could be possibly contaminated,” he said.
“We made the decision to institute a boil water alert for the Darwin and Palmerston region, and that is a precautionary measure to make sure that we remove risk from the system.Â
“It has been a very big couple of weeks and the last thing we need on top of that is an outbreak of gastroenteritis to complicate things.”
Water was flowing over the spillway at Darwin River Dam in January. (ABC News: Tristan Hooft)