Major water break hits St. Clairsville | News, Sports, Jobs
Photo provided by St. Clairsville Mayor Kathryn Thalman unloading a truckload of water bottles.
St. Clairsville – A large water pipe burst led to a “catastrophic,” According to Michael Reed, director of the water and wastewater department, this is an outage, albeit temporary, in St. Clairsville’s water treatment and distribution system.
“We had to react quite quickly because our water tanks were too empty. Fortunately, thanks to our city employees and the contractor James White Construction, we were able to get the situation back in order relatively quickly and get the water back into the tanks,” Reed said Wednesday.
The timing of the water main break was unfortunate because the St. Clairsville Water and Sewer Authority had already scheduled a planned outage for Wednesday to connect new water mains to the existing system in the water tank area. Since the situation was resolved by Tuesday, the authority decided to go ahead with the planned outage.
“We had a plan to give water to everyone, but when we started connecting the water line, the pressure in the tanks started to drop. We discovered that there was a problem with a water valve that went from the water plant to the water tanks and was not allowing us to get water into the tanks,” Reed said.
To solve the problem, Reed said, the department opened its backup connection with the Belmont County Water and Sewer District to send emergency water to the city. When the emergency water started pouring in, the Water and Sewer Department went to work to repair the faulty valve. Due to the low water pressure caused by the faulty valve, many city residents lost all water pressure.
To resolve the issue and restore water pressure to customers, the department kept its connection open with the Belmont County Water and Sewer District and maintained its connection with the St. Clairsville Water Plant to pump as much water as possible into the city’s water tanks. Once pressure was restored, a boil water order was issued, which will remain in effect through this evening.
“Thanks to the quick response of our employees and their knowledge and skills, we were able to resolve the situation. It could have been much worse. Because of this situation, we could have lost all the water in the city. But fortunately, we were able to respond quickly and save as much water as possible,” Reed said. “I would also like to thank the St. Clairsville City Council for their commitment and assistance.”
Elaina Moscato, assistant to the service manager, thanked everyone who helped.
“We also want to give a special thank you to our council members for their help. We have Terra Butler and Officer TJ Stewart, the owners of the Newellstown Diner. They picked up some pallets of water for the citizens that were distributed at the recreation center last night. And Holly West is also a council member and she got Sam’s Club to donate three pallets of water and we were able to distribute those today at the recreation center and behind the fire station.”
Moscato added that the distribution of free water to residents “A way to thank you for your patience. We are in this together and doing our best.”
Mayor Kathryn Thalman also helped with the water distribution. Thalman said Butler contacted her about working together to distribute water to the city’s residents. Butler and Stewart suggested purchasing a pallet of water from Rural King. Thalman said the one pallet was gone so quickly that they had to return to Rural King to purchase another. After purchasing the second pallet, West contacted Thalman to tell her that Sam’s Club officials had become aware of the situation and decided to donate three pallets of cases of water to be distributed to residents.
“Our team plays very well together. There is no doubt about that. I am proud of everyone,” said Thalmann. “It could have been much worse.”
