By Matthew McCully
While Lennoxville residents have been waking up every day this week to better and better roads as transport ministry crews repaved parts of Queen Street overnight, those living on Maple Grove woke up to a different story. The freshly paved strip at the end of their street was being torn up to deal with a leak sometime in the night. And the day went downhill from there, with a second water main break causing a major traffic backup Thursday afternoon and the closure of Queen Street between Massawippi and the 410.
Luckily, the crew fixing the first leak was already in place to address the second breakage.
According to Sherbrooke’s communications department, the repair work was expected to continue until Midnight Thursday night.
In the meantime, Maple Grove Street homes, initially told their water would be turned off until 5 p.m. along with those living in the surrounding area were expected to be without water until midnight, followed by a 48-hour boil water advisory.
One Maple Grove resident contacted The Record, a little miffed to receive the notification their water was turned off via a tag on the front doorknob, not entirely useful unless one was visiting one’s own home. They added later in the afternoon that no one from the City stopped by to provide an update about the extended water shutoff. Luckily, they visited a neighbour on the other side of town earlier in the day to fill up buckets to be able to flush the toilet.
Lennoxville Borough President Claude Charron confirmed to The Record he received that same complaint, and would look into ways the City could better communicate with citizens during incidents of this type.
Waterworks are the jurisdiction of a municipality. The roadwork, being a provincial route, is the domain of the transport ministry.
Sherbrooke media reps could not pinpoint the cause of the pipe problems, and a call put into the transport ministry did not receive a reply before press time.
