Equipment failure at tower to blame for North Aurora water woes

In the wake of last week's water emergency in North Aurora, village officials have learned that a bit of public education is needed about the village's reverse emergency telephone notification system.

People who had signed up for the service complained they didn't receive calls when the boil order was issued March 19.

However, they may have received the calls but didn't know they were from the village and hung up. When the call is answered, there is a silent delay of several seconds before the message comes on, Village Administrator Sue McLaughlin said.

The delay is similar to that of telemarketing calls.

The village will send out letters to those who complained, explaining the delay and how those with caller identification systems will get a display that says "866" for emergency calls, and another number for nonemergency notices such as delayed garbage pickup.

The good news is, she said, that 200 more people signed up for the emergency notification service Friday, bringing the village to about 60 percent coverage.

Meanwhile, it is replacing a faulty pressure transducer in a water tank near the North Aurora Auto Mall. The transducer sent an incorrect signal to village pumps last week, falsely indicating that the tower had 50 feet of water, when in fact it was near zero. The pumps then stopped sending water to that tower. Low water pressure resulted, and the boil order was given so customers would not get sick from potential contamination by microorganisms.

The village is also doubling the amount of alarms in its water system that alert operators that something is wrong, and is adding a second system-monitoring computer as both a backup if the primary fails, and as a way to double-check the readings. The computer oversees the village's two active towers and all its wells. (There is an empty tower near the Oberweis factory). The village had planned to add the computer later this year.

"It (the failure) was a way to learn a hard and difficult lesson," McLaughlin said.