Crews Work to Flush Water System, Restore Power to Timberline, Sahalee

After a , issues have continued for residents of the Sahalee and Timberline neighborhoods in Sammamish.

Latest news this morning is that about 1,500 residents were without power between about midnight and 4:30 this morning, due to some faulty power equipment.

PSE spokesman Roger Thompson said this morning that the Northeast Sammamish Sewer & Water District was one of the affected customers in last night's outage, and that as of about 9 a.m. this morning, one of the sewer stations was still without power. Crews were working to replace an electrical switch there.

This follows on the heels of the outage yesterday, as it continues to flush lines to its customers. Laura Keough, the station's general manager, issued the following statement about yesterday's incident: 

At about 8:30 Tuesday morning a tree fell on a power line on SR202 (the Redmond Fall-City Highway).  This caused temporary power outages at many of our facilities.  We also experienced power surges which caused two large valves to open and a large amount of water to enter the distribution system at high velocity.  Water pipes over time get coated with minerals from the water that flows through the pipes.  When there is a surge to the system from a situation such as this or a water main break or a fire, the high velocitiy tends to scour the minerals off the pipes. Many customers noticed these minerals in their water. From the calls we have received today it seems to be mostly the Timberline and Sahalee neighborhoods that are experiencing the problem. This is not a health issue. The water flows through these same pipes every day. The crew flushed water mains until about 11:30 last night when they thought they had it cleared up.  We have received a few calls this morning about areas that were still experiencing dirty water and our crew has dispatched to continue flushing these areas. Homeowners who have called have been advised to run the water in their bathtub or at a hose bib until it clears up. If it is not cleared up after about 10 or 15 minutes it means we have not been able to flush that part of the system yet and are advising people to try again in a couple hours. Customers who continue to experience dirty water should call the District to report the location. 

Keough said crews worked flushing the lines until about 11:30 last night, June 5, and it seemed that everything was clear, but they have had some reports this morning of continuing issues for some customers. The problems have mainly been in the Timberline and Sahalee neighborhoods.

Any residents experiencing continuing issues with mineral debris, or "dirty" water through their pipes, should call 425-868-1144, as the district is working to pinpoint areas that need to be flushed again today.