Teamwork gets Murray Bridge water back in business

The quick-thinking and collaboration of SA Water teams from across South Australia has helped keep water flowing to thousands of customers in Murray Bridge after a leak to one of the town’s major water mains threatened supply.

On late Friday afternoon, team members from the corporation’s Murray Bridge depot attended a break on a main along Adelaide Road that delivers drinking water to over 16,000 customers in Murray Bridge and surrounding townships including Burdett and Monteith.

With a potential overnight water supply interruption required to safely fix the leak, SA Water’s General Manager of Customer Delivery Kerry Rowlands said crews developed a plan to minimise inconvenience for their customers.

“Repairs were able to be held off for a few hours until after 9 pm, allowing our customers to get through the busy dinner, cleaning and bathing period and limiting the majority of the potential supply interruption to the small hours of the morning when most people are in bed,” Kerry said.  

“This time also allowed us to implement alternate supply arrangements, with over 100 casks of water delivered to customers with special requirements and three large water tankers connected up to the area’s hospital and correctional facilities to see them through.

“We were also able to get 12 pallets of bottled water delivered to the State Emergency Service (SES) depot for other customers to come and collect at their own pace.

“Supply to some of our larger customers in the area including Thomas Foods International and Beston Pure Foods were not affected, or they were operating at low production throughout the shutdown period and able to use their individual onsite water storages.”

Messages were placed on social media channels urging Murray Bridge residents to prepare for the potential outage by filling a jug with water and placing it in the fridge, and filling a bucket to help with cleaning and bathroom usage.  

Despite the complexities of repairing a large water main, a complete interruption was averted with parts of the local network remaining on a low-pressure water supply overnight before normal water services were fully restored to all customers at around 4:30 am.

“It really was a terrific team effort from right across the business, with our community support and welding crews travelling from Adelaide and our South Para workshop respectively to liaise with the local depot on repairing the main as quickly and safely as possible,” Kerry said.   

“While it’s tough to prevent leaks and breaks like this from occurring due to soil movement and other environmental factors, our capable team showed their dedication to the job and local community by working through the night into the morning to ensure our customers could have water access as quickly as possible.

“We thank the local SES for their assistance in helping distribute our temporary drinking water supply to customers, as well as the wider Murray Bridge community for taking note of advice to be mindful of their water usage throughout the night.”

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