[HollyMutual-Announce] System currently down

[Mark Derbyshire]

All:

To further on yesterday's email (see below), the board held an emergency
meeting last night to plan the path forward. We have contacted Colorado
Water Well (CWW) this morning to immediately replace the failed
isolation valve that forced us to shut down the system yesterday. This
will also enable CWW to address why so many properties were left without
water last week.

This does not directly address fixing the leak, but we believe this will
get the project going faster, with minimal permitting required to get
most of the properties back online, while we pursue the more extensive
permitting necessary to excavate Whitehall Dr. The latter project will
be expensive, and the board wants to perform its due diligence to
identify the most cost-effective and appropriate solution. If we are
successful, this should not impact the overall time to fix the leak, as
getting the excavator on-site has always been the long pole in the tent.

The board is also working to schedule a shareholders' meeting, to
provide transparency and encourage members to address their concerns and
thoughts. Because of social distancing, we envision an Internet-based
meeting where members can join using their cell phones and/or desktop or
laptop computers. Several of the board members have been using this
approach successfully for the past couple of months, and we will be
providing more details as we converge on the plan.

Cheers,

Mark Derbyshire

On 5/21/20 12:37 PM, Mark Derbyshire wrote:
> All:
>
> Our attempts to isolate a small section of the main pipeline affected by
> the leak have run into two problems:
>
> 1. Many more properties have been without water beyond the two
> properties we expected
>
> 2. The leak has resumed leaking
>
> We have been chasing #1 since this past weekend, and it appears the
> southeast section of our main pipeline loop was altered many years ago
> in some unknown fashion. This would have been done before Colorado Water
> Well (CWW) took over maintenance, because their records show no
> indication of what we've discovered. With the evidence we have for #2,
> we're highly certain the isolation valve we closed on the south side of
> Whitehall Dr. is the culprit. It is nearly 70 years old, and while we've
> exercised it several times today, it appears incapable of fully sealing. 
>
> CWW had no choice but to turn off the Piedmont Well to stop the leak, so
> at the moment we are not providing water to any properties. The board
> received an estimate yesterday for the leak repairs, and we are
> considering that solution, which is a bit simpler than what we
> originally expected. At the same time CWW is searching to determine if
> we have any other isolation options, and in the worst case we will try
> to sequence the repairs to gain partial system operation early on.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Mark
>