West Virginia American Water issued a news release Sunday evening to stress to residents and dispel rumors that it is making "around-the-clock efforts to maintain and restore water service to customers," and the company has "no plans to turn water service off to any communities."
The news release goes on to advise customers in higher elevations of the outlying parts of its systems may experience outages in their water service until power is restored or until West Virginia American Water can supply generators for the specific boosters and tanks in that area.
"Crews have been working around the clock since Friday night's storm to deploy emergency generators to dozens of remote sites including water storage tanks and booster stations that remain without power," the company stated in its news release.
Remote sites that have lost power or lost communication with the plant control room must each be checked manually, according to West Virginia American Water, which has been hampered by downed trees and power lines and making some sites inaccessible.
"West Virginia American Water assures its customers that these outages are not due to any problem with the water system; rather, they are due to lack of power to pump treated water into certain parts of the system," the company stated in its news release. "Crews are working diligently to move generators to pump water into tanks, and once tanks are full, move those generators on to other needed areas. This process will continue until power is restored."
Any scheduled shutoffs would be announced prior to the shutoff by a press release posted to the company's website, according to the news release.
"Our employees have put their families and their own storm-related problems on hold to maintain water service to our customers and restore service to those without water at this time," Jeff McIntyre, president of West Virginia American Water, said in a news release. "The rumors about shutting off service to any area are completely unfounded and would be entirely counterproductive to our company's power restoration efforts.
"We appreciate your assistance in putting this rumor to rest as quickly as possible, as the time our employees spend dispelling this rumor wastes critical time for our efforts."
West Virginia American Water has stationed water tankers for customers without water service to to bring their own containers to fill:
- South Charleston Community Center, Jefferson Road,
- Salt Rock Fire Department at 5512 St., Rt. 10,
- Kinetic Park Drive off of Hal Greer Boulevard/Troy Brown Highway,
- Exxon gas station off the Mossy/Rt. 60 exit of I-64/I-77
The company also advises that any updates will be provided at www.westvirginiaamwater.com or at 1-800-685-8660.
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