Benicia ends water conservation order after pipeline repaired
(Photo courtesy City of Benicia, Graphic by Solano NewsNet)
Officials in Benicia have lifted a water conservation order that was imposed after a water pipeline at the city’s water treatment plant ruptured over the weekend.
In a phone message to residents on Thursday, a City of Benicia spokesperson said repairs at the water treatment plant have been completed, and an order that required residents and businesses to reduce their water use by 30 percent is no longer in effect.
Residents and businesses saved a collective 4.5 million gallons of water during the four-day conservation order, the city said.
Earlier this week, city officials said crews had successfully reached a 24-inch pipe that began leaking at the Lake Herman water treatment plant on Sunday.
In a note to residents, Benicia’s City Manager Erik Upson said residents had complained to him about infrastructure problems for a while.
“We have kicked the can of properly funding our infrastructure down the road for decades,” Upson said. “It is never popular to raise rates and so it was left to the next generation, then the next. And so, we have an approximate $300 million dollar Capital Improvement Program we now need to fund over the next 20 years.”
Upson warned pipe failures may happen again “as we work over the decades coming to catch up with where our infrastructure should be.”
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