People being stuck inside in Estevan and the surrounding area has a few natural consequences. According to the City of Estevan, one of those consequences is the amount of water they're using and wastewater they're generating going way up.

Employees at the Estevan Water Treatment Plant are noticing the flow has been rising for some time now. Whether it's because people are showering more often or just washing their hands more, the raw numbers show Estevan has been consistently using more water since the COVID-19 precautions took effect.

"At the water plant we've noticed quite a bit of uptick in flow," said Shane Bucsis, manager of the water treatment plant, "about ten to twenty liters per second more for the average time. At the wastewater plant, we're seeing flows of a million or a million and a half liters more a day than what we usually see."

According to Bucsis, this means an increase of about 20 percent over normal flows at both the water and wastewater plants. Naturally, he explained, if water use rises so does wastewater output, as in water that flows through the sewer.

Correlation doesn't always equal causation, but for Bucsis, it's pretty clear that COVID-19 and people being inside more is what's causing the flow increase. Once people started spending more time at home, they noticed the uptick almost right away.

"Right around February when it became an issue, we saw an increase right around that time," he said, recalling the early days of news about the epidemic. "And it's carried through."

But according to Bucsis, there's no need to worry about overloading the water system in the city. Even if the measures to combat COVID-19 last much longer than this, the water system is prepared to handle it at both ends.

"There is an overflow lagoon at the wastewater plant that is able to process the extra flows," said Bucsis. "If we were to hit that, we just re-process. With the water plant, we are way under the designed capacity of the plant. We are able to run the plant for longer hours to make up water, as well as increase the flow up to 180 liters per second."

The staff at the plants are doing well with social distancing and are handling the extra work well so far, according to Bucsis. He said the only real worry now is people flushing the wrong things down the toilet; anything other than body waste and toilet paper doesn't go there.

"We've had a couple of issues," he said. "The main thing is there are lift stations throughout the city. Not that you have a chance of plugging your own water main or your neighbors' or your area's water main. But you have a chance of plugging off the lift station because there are pumps that lift that out, and rags and things like that will get caught in them."