[HollyMutual-Announce] Important clarification on system activation/deactivation

[Holly Mutual Water Company]

All:

Several recent incidents have come to our attention that highlight a 
misconception that can lead to serious problems for homeowners and 
Holly Mutual as a whole. If you have some form of cutoff valve for 
Holly Mutual irrigation water near your pipeline tap, and if you have 
this engaged during the time when the Holly Mutual system is 
deactivated in the fall to when it is reactivated in the spring, you 
are fine and can skip this email. If you are unsure or do not do this, 
please read the following and contact us if you need help.

Holly Mutual, like most if not all water providers, requires every 
homeowner on our system to have a water cutoff valve close to their 
tap. In the event of a downstream line break on a homeowner's property, 
this allows us to shutoff their water supply without having to turn off 
the entire Holly Mutual system, which would affect everyone. This was 
true in the days long past when Holly Mutual was our only neighborhood 
water system, and is still true today.

After Holly Mutual became strictly an irrigation water supplier, many 
of us now use our cutoff valves (or another one) to turn off the water 
supply to our irrigation systems in the fall, and then open this again 
in the spring when Holly Mutual is reactivated. This allows our 
sprinkler companies to blow-out or drain the residual water in our 
irrigation systems, preventing freeze damage in the winter. That is all 
good and proper.

However several homes apparently now have sprinkler companies that do 
not engage any cutoff valves when Holly Mutual shuts down in the fall. 
Furthermore they also open other valves downstream to drain water from 
the irrigation systems, and leave them open. Unfortunately when the 
Holly Mutual system is reactivated in the spring, the cutoff valve is 
still open, and water starts flooding out of the other open valves. 
This costs us not only lost water, prevents our storage tanks from 
filling, forces Colorado Water Well to track down where the water is 
being lost, and may cause damage to the homeowner's property. During 
such times in the past, we have been forced to shut the entire Holly 
Mutual system down, exactly when many people are trying to get their 
sprinkler systems operational. While we have not yet had to do the this 
in 2017, we are still trying to uncover why we are losing more water 
than we should from the wells.

One suggestion was made that we advise homeowners before the Holly 
Mutual system is activated, so homeowners can close their valves. 
However this isn't practical, because Colorado Water Well typically 
performs certain forms of well maintenance over the winter months, and 
some of these require our pipelines to be flushed or pressure tested. 
This can happen at any time as required. Even before system activation, 
CWW will typically turn the wells off and on several times between 
February and April in order to check everything out and repair any 
issues that appear. If people have left their valves open, their 
irrigation systems will be filled with water, and given freezing 
temperatures, significant damage can occur. If gone undetected, this 
can also lead to flooded basements and the like. The homeowner is 
liable for all damages in such cases, as this is downstream from the 
Holly Mutual tap.

So please completely cutoff your irrigation systems from Holly Mutual 
in the fall.

One final point is a few homeowners have called to say they either 
don't have a cutoff vale, or don't know where it is. We may be able 
help, because CWW has documentation on where the many of the cutoff 
valves are located. Please call if you need such assistance. However if 
we don't have your cutoff valve location on our maps, there is nothing 
we will be able to do. More concerning is the possibility that new 
irrigation systems are being installed without cutoff valves at all. If 
this applies to your system, or if you cannot locate your cutoff valve, 
you will need to have your plumbing or irrigation company add an 
accessible cutoff valve. We cannot make exceptions or provide waivers 
to our cutoff valve policy. Failure to follow this policy could result 
in physical disconnection, although our objective is simply to bring 
everyone into compliance for the good of all of our homeowners.

Thanks,
Mark Derbyshire