Almost 40K people without water in Asheville area; service to return over next 48 hours
ASHEVILLE - Nearly 40,000 people in the area were without water the morning of Dec. 28, but by the afternoon city leaders said they expected full service to gradually return over the next 48 hours.
“The southern water treatment plant is back online as of about noon … and it’s putting out about three million gallons a day,” Director of Water Resources David Melton said at a 4 p.m. press conference. “So, that’s very good news.”
Melton noted that service would not return to everyone affected at once as the water department refilled lines, flushed air out and sampled and tested for water quality.
“We will have some customers who have water, and some customers who don’t have water until the system fully recharges,” he said. “Obviously, folks closer to the water treatment plant will have water first, just because of the way the system works.”
Some residents might have water and lose it intermittently before the system fully refills, Melton said.
But city leaders expected everyone to be squared away again over the next two days, they said.
Past reporting:Asheville-area communities without water as city faces line breaks, other issues
Related:Temperatures drop to 8-year low over Christmas weekend
Tens of thousands of people have been without water for days now, derailing local businesses and inconveniencing people at home. The shortages started after a plant covering the south area stopped producing Dec. 24. As of the morning of Dec. 28, Melton said there were about 38,500 people without water. Most were in South Asheville and nearby communities to the south.
In total, Asheville’s water department has about 124,000 customers, Melton told the Citizen Times – though he noted that the numbers can be iffy with multiple people living under one roof, for example.
Melton and Mayor Esther Manheimer have called the outage “unprecedented” in scope.
But Manheimer was “not sure” that the city could have done anything differently because “the extreme cold weather for that many days caused so many breaks in the system and ramped up the demand for water … in unforeseen ways,” she said.
The plant was not able to produce water Dec. 24 after parts of it “froze over,” Melton said. Now the water department is repairing, replumbing and “doing the things to guard against this in the future,” he added.
On top of the plant issues, cold weather led to line breaks. The city has repaired about a dozen major line breaks, Melton said.
Some residents have reported confusion around whether they are under a boil water advisory or not.
“You will receive a notice or have already received a notice if you are under a boil water advisory,” Manheimer said at the press conference.
Local concerns around the city's communication during the outage again came up Dec. 28.
"Why is this level of communication coming up four days into this?" asked South Asheville resident John Nicolay, who also attended the press conference earlier in the day.
"The only thing I would offer — and I think that's a valid question — is that the city has tried to send out communications, using AVL Alerts, to the customers of the water system," Manheimer said. "And, you know, obviously coming off of Christmas, the city itself was closed except for the folks who had to come in to deal with this emergency, and who would be on call anyway. So, we had a little bit of a challenge with communications with the holiday, but I would offer that I think we've been able to get out communications to folks as to the status of the situation, but not necessarily holding a press conference every moment."
Other residents expressed similar frustrations to the Citizen Times on Dec. 27 and Dec. 28.
Residents scramble for water as city offers to deliver to some
Only two months into his time living in Arden, Frank Beaullieu was stocking up on water bottles Dec. 28. He was standing in an Arden Ingles parking lot, unloading two large cases into the back of his vehicle. Beaullieu’s purchase was conservative. Others came out of the store with several gallons.
"We’ve never had these kinds of problems like they have up here,” said Beaullieu, who moved to Arden from Atlanta.
He was out of luck on showers, he said. He’d have to drive to a gym, he figured, and even then, they would have been out of Arden. He’d had no water since Christmas, he said.
Inside the Ingles, stacks of water bottles were laid out across the store, ready to be snagged.
The grocery store had sold “a ton” of water, though an exact amount wasn’t clear, Customer Service Manager Scott Slater said. Meanwhile, Ingles was dealing with its own lack of water – limiting its deli and forcing the use of portable toilets.
“As long as the warehouse doesn’t run out, we’ll be good,” Slater said.
The city is offering to bring water to those unable to go out and buy it.
More than 80 people had already taken advantage of the offer Dec. 28, the day it began, Fire Chief Scott Burnette said at the 4 p.m. press conference. Another 111 people were identified as in need with the city’s climate justice map, Burnette said. They also received water.
To get information on water delivery, residents can call 211. The line is open for calls from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. It will reopen Dec. 29.
The city is still asking the following of residents:
Minimize or delay processes that use large quantities of water.
Take shorter showers.
Do not wash your car.
Delay doing laundry.
Delay running the dishwasher.
Do not drip faucets.
In areas where there is no water, check on your neighbors and older people.
At press time a boil water advisory was still in effect for parts of the southern and western areas. The western area was tacked on Dec. 28. For the most current boil water information, visit ashevillenc.gov/service/water-quality-advisories.
This story will be updated.
Ryan Oehrli covers public safety for the Citizen Times. Comments? Questions? Tips? Send them to coehrli@citizentimes.com.
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Asheville water service out for almost 40K. When will it be back?
