NEWPORT – The main water pump at the Newport Water District pumping station on the north end of Nokomis Pond was being reinstalled Wednesday afternoon, two days after it failed after a flood.

Superintendent Tom Todd said the district “began making water about 8 p.m. Tuesday night. The storage anks are coming up slowly.”

Todd said that the water pressure has gradually increased from 35 pounds per square inch, to 42 psi.

“And we are finally gaining,” he added.

Although Todd expected the second main pump to be returned to Newport late Wednesday after being refurbished, it will not go on line until later today, he said.

Meanwhile, the pumping station will be manned 24 hours a day for the next several days to ensure that everything is working correctly.

Todd said earlier this week that when he arrived at the station Tuesday morning “the water was literally running out the doorway.”

Because the station has no overflow system to allow flooding to go back into Nokomis Pond, the water overtook all the machinery. Alarms in place to warn of such emergencies failed to work, said Todd.

While the pumps were fixed and the building dried out Tuesday and Wednesday, NWD customers were ordered to conserve water, schools were closed and a dam on the Sebasticook River was closed to provide a fire protection pond.

“We’re not sure what happened,” said Todd, who said the overflow was not related to the weekend’s rain. “We still don’t know why they stopped pumping.”

Todd said he expected everything to be running normally by Friday afternoon.