Faucets flow again; boil water advisory in effect in Watertown - WWNY

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WATERTOWN, New York (WWNY) - Faucets are flowing, but don’t drink the water or cook with it. This is where things stand after a 1939 water pipe broke Thursday near Watertown’s water treatment plant, draining the entire system.

It affects an estimated 45,000 people in and outside city limits.

City officials say it’s unclear when the boil water advisory will be lifted. Some testing has to be done. As for an update on the water, City Manager Ken Mix says the city is slowly and gently refilling the reservoirs.

“Pretty much everybody I’ve heard about has water now,” he said.

Despite some construction on Huntington Street, the epicenter of Watertown’s water main break, things are starting to flow smoothly.

“At this point, I haven’t heard any reports of water line breaks, so it seems to be going well,” said Mix.

Inside the facility, Mix says water is being pumped into the city’s reservoirs, which ran out of water within a matter of hours on Thursday.

“You had two cases. One is what was in the reservoir, people were using. So it was going in one direction. Also, it was going in the opposite direction where from midnight the night before, just millions of gallons were pouring out,” said Mayor Jeff Smith.

Now as the water flows back in, Mix says slower is better.

“Because if we start breaking other water lines, we’re back further behind. Then we have to start fixing those,” he said.

Asked when the boil water advisory will be lifted, Mix says there isn’t really a timeline. It’s all dependent on the testing which will be ongoing until the city gets the needed results.

“We want the bacterial counts to be lower than the standards,” said Mix.

While crews cleaned up what was left of fixing the water main break, we caught crews at the city’s reservoirs, too.

“They had to go up and visually take a look at it to make sure they were filling because they weren’t getting an indication on the computer monitors they thought they should be getting. But they are, in fact, filling,” said Mix.

As for the cost, Mix thinks it won’t be much different than any other water main break the city has seen in the past. The only difference this time was the location and urgency of the situation.

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Faucets flow again; boil water advisory in effect in Watertown - WWNY
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