The Town of Fri­day Har­bor has not­ed that water lev­els in the water stor­age tanks in Town are dan­ger­ous­ly low and the Town is there­fore impos­ing an imme­di­ate water rationing order and may lat­er need to ini­ti­ate planned ser­vice out­ages to main­tain ser­vice. We have no indi­ca­tion that there are major leaks in the dis­tri­b­u­tion  Con­tin­ue Reading

To Fri­day Har­bor water sys­tem cus­tomers – Town of Fri­day Har­bor is ask­ing any­one who owns or lives in prop­er­ty served by the Town water sys­tem to check for water leaks both inside and out­side. Since the freez­ing tem­per­a­tures arrived the Town has seen an unusu­al draw down of our water tanks chal­leng­ing the abil­i­ty  Con­tin­ue Reading

To Town Water Cus­tomers: The recent cold snap has caused pipes to freeze in hous­es and build­ings that have nev­er had that issue before.  Due to increased water usage, we know there are more leaks in the sys­tem.  We ask every­one to check their hous­es, inside and out, to make sure they don’t have burst  Con­tin­ue Reading

Steve Roberts shot this pho­to on First Street last night. It sure is a thing of beau­ty, but if you don’t need to go out, con­sid­er stay­ing home. Now’s a good time to binge on Net­flix or read that book you keep putting off. Also a good time to avoid giv­ing EMS and the ER  Con­tin­ue Reading

Snow is cur­rent­ly in the fore­cast for this week­end. If you would like to learn more about how the Coun­ty pri­or­i­tizes and responds to snow events on Coun­ty Roads please vis­it Map Gallery | San Juan Coun­ty, WA see where you can view our pri­or­i­ty maps and plans for snow removal. Please remem­ber, win­ter weath­er  Con­tin­ue Reading

Freez­er Burned is an ongo­ing series on the San Juan Update, writ­ten by Steve Ulvi… (Authors note: this fic­tion­al tale of Alas­ka bush life adven­ture, grief and redemp­tion, cir­ca the 1980s, will be con­tin­ued found­ed upon two pre­vi­ous sto­ries.  See Freez­er Burned: “No Mat­ter What” and “The Con­fines of Heav­en” for char­ac­ter back­ground.) The Con­fines of  Con­tin­ue Reading

From drought con­di­tions this sum­mer to record rain­fall and flood­ing last month, water man­age­ment is cer­tain­ly a crit­i­cal issue. San Juan County’s Clean Water Util­i­ty, man­aged by the Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Stew­ard­ship, serves cit­i­zens by address­ing storm and sur­face water infra­struc­ture improve­ments such as stream cul­verts and water qual­i­ty treat­ment. The Util­i­ty also sweeps and  Con­tin­ue Reading

UPDATE — Kille­brew Lake Road on Orcas Island is now open. Pub­lic Works com­plet­ed their assess­ment Thurs­day morn­ing and have deter­mined that the road is safe to open. Laporte Road remains closed just past the inter­sec­tion with John Jones Road.