Most of Waterbury will have water flowing by Tuesday night, although the boil water advisory will remain in effect, Waterbury Mayor Paul Pernerewski said during a press conference at the city’s water department on Tuesday.
According to Pernerewski, water is being carefully introduced into two 12-inch low-pressure mains as part of a controlled process designed to mitigate air trapped throughout the system following a major water main break that occurred on Friday night.
The process is expected to be a slow as water mains may have relaxed or shifted. If the high-pressure water is released too quickly, it may cause damage to smaller distribution mains and service lines that feed homes and businesses. After the water has been released at low pressure, the pressure will gradually be increased.
“The result of that is that some people are starting to see water now. Most people we would expect, we hope, will have water by this evening,” Pernerewski said on Tuesday.
“Once the water is through the system, we can then increase the pressure to the system. And people will be up and have that pressure. In the meantime, we are also, as we indicated, going to convert the 12-inch bypass on the gravity line to an 18-inch bypass on the gravity line, which will take the folks who currently have water, but not great pressure. They will all get much better pressure.”
Pernerewski noted that they are remaining cautious because the Waterbury has “never faced a situation of re-energizing a system the way we’re doing it right now.”
“We want to make sure that we don’t cause any unintended consequences. It’s a little bit slower than I had hoped (Monday),” he said. “Most people should be able to flush their toilets by this evening.”
Drinkable water will not be available immediately. According to Brad Malay, superintendent for the Waterbury Water Department, the best-case scenario would be getting the 24 to 30 samples to the lab by Wednesday afternoon.
“I’m going to take representative samples from all three services, low service, and both east side and west side of the city, and once those come back and clear, then we should be good to go,” Malay said.
Water distribution was to continue at both Crosby High School and Municipal Stadium on Tuesday. Starting Wednesday, water distribution will just be at Municipal Stadium. If the city gets positive result for the testing by Thursday, there will be no water distribution beyond Thursday.
Pernerewski said city officials are trying to get the schools ramped back up. “We’re going to end up having to close the schools tomorrow,” he said on Tuesday. “We’ll see where we are by Thursday.”
Waterbury Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Darren Schwartz said the school district was be cautious with students coming back to school.
“Without working plumbing, we can’t have students back,” Schwartz said Tuesday. “As schools come online, we’ll make sure that all the toilets work and we’re working with our food services department to find ways to make sure that we can feed students safely. We have 16 schools without water. We anticipate the schools [will] have water by tonight.”
Schwartz noted that Wednesday will be the fourth “snow day” for Waterbury schools this year and they haven’t even gotten into the “meat of the winter” yet.
“In the state of Connecticut, you’re required to go to school 180 school days,” he said. “In Waterbury Public Schools for this calendar school year, we actually have 181 scheduled. We have some flexibility there. We have to go 180 days. We have to do that by June 30. Depending on how long this goes and how the winter shakes out, we have some opportunity there to maybe reduce and look at other days in the calendar that we can make up for students.
“We’ll figure it out. Teachers are flexible,” Schwartz added. “We’ll adjust on the fly. … You can’t plan for natural disasters or and these types of emergencies, but the reality is, is that we’ve heard nothing but amazing things from our teachers and our parents. They understand this is a situation that none of us called for, and we’ll just adjust as necessary.”