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WYOMING / CARBON COUNTY

Rawlins

Ran dry
Rawlins, Wyoming
Vasiliymeshko, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Population (2020)
8,221
Water cut
March 3, 2022
Cause
infrastructure
Where
41.79°N, 107.24°W
Official site
City of Rawlins

What happened, and when

Every dated water event the register holds for Rawlins, newest first, each with the sources that document it.

  1. Ran dryon the card

    Ran dry: what happened

    Since December 2021 Rawlins had been limited to well and reservoir water while its 32-mile spring transmission line was repaired, and its tanks were already depleted. Overnight on March 2 to 3, 2022 a full-circle break on a six-inch main flowed for seven hours while a treatment-plant line was down, and the system emptied, producing negative pressure and a loss of water to the city and to neighbouring Sinclair. The city called it a catastrophic failure; residents were under a boil advisory until March 8 and about 99,000 bottles of water were handed out. The city estimates three to five years of repairs to its century-old wood-stave collection system.

    • City of Rawlins: Water infrastructure and 2022 critical water event report (utility insert, April 2022) (March 30, 2022)
    • Rawlins Times (via wyomingnews.com): Community bands together during water emergency (March 15, 2022)
    • WyoFile: Rawlins's municipal water failure part of a growing climate concern (August 4, 2022)