A "Quiet" Sunday

Well, we've fallen behind again. Time to split the journal posts by day so they don't run on too long.

Sunday we stayed on the refuge to catch up and rest after two days in Port Aransas. Rest was relative. The bicycles and motorcycles needed a little maintenance, that took a couple of hours. The tanks needed draining, always a slightly messy task. Things to do went on most of the day...so much for r'n'r.

The highlight of the day was when the water on the refuge ran out. Ellen had just finished taking a shower and asked if there was a problem since the flow seemed pretty weak. Then, as I was heading off for mine, she said there was no water in Speedy, which is connected to the refuge water system.

I went off to look to see if any of the staff were about and found Greg, one of the refuge managers, at the water building. The refuge has a well with a reverse osmosis treatment system. It also has a 15,000 gallon water tank, 20 feet high. It seemed to have just over a foot of water in it. It normally gets no lower than 15 feet. (Under that is considered a problem since the water tank is also the source of water for the fire crew.) The pumps and treatment system were working normally, so there was a big leak somewhere. All the maintenance guys were called in and they started by shutting off all the valves on the refuge to allow the tank to start refilling to get some pressure back.

It was dark by then, so the water would stay off until Monday. It wasn't a problem for us since we had just filled Speedy's tank in case we decided to stay over at the crane festival, but for some of the other volunteers and the residents, there would be no water until they found the leak.

A quiet sunday indeed.