Riverhead declares state of emergency due to lack of water

The town of Riverhead in St. Mary's Bay on Newfoundland's Avalon Peninsula has declared a state of emergency.

Sheila Lee, mayor of Riverhead, says the problem is significant and parts of the town are now in their fourth day without water.

"For the past four days, part of our town, the Coot's Pond hill area, the residents have been totally without water," Lee told CBC.

"It's getting pretty desperate for them, they can't have showers, they can't wash clothes."

Lee said those affected are able to get water from other communities, but that's not an effective solution.

"That's not the answer, they need to have their water back," she said.

The water outage was caused by the failure of a pump at a booster station in the community used to push water up the Coot's Pond hill. Lee said it is the second time in a matter of weeks that the pump has failed.

"The company came in and replaced the pump with another pump, a temporary pump, but we don't think it's powerful enough and the water is not being pumped over the hill," she said.

Lee said she is hoping that the company will be able to return to Riverhead on Monday morning and install a proper pump, however a more permanent solution is needed. 

She said improvements to the town's water system were completed in the last year, but no work was done on the booster pump due to a lack of funding. Lee hopes that emergency funds might be able to help amend the situation. 

It was recommended by engineers that the pump house be moved or an additional pump be added to properly move the water.

A state of emergency was also declared in the town in 2013 because of similar problems.