Waterbury Mayor Paul Pernerewski said progress has been made on the water main break during a press conference on Monday, but noted that 60% of the city remains without potable water and there is no definitive timeline when it will return.
The mayor announced that city schools will be closed again Tuesday after they were closed on Monday due to the main break.
“We need to make sure that that water gets flushed out of the schools,” Pernerewski said on Monday afternoon. “In addition, a number of our older schools run on steam heat, steam heat requires an infusion of water to keep going. … So we’re going to close tomorrow.”
The latest water main break occurred around 11 p.m. on Friday night. A transmission main line failed as crews were working on an earlier water main break on Thomaston Avenue that occurred on Wednesday. Since then, much of the city has been without potable water.
The city will continue to distribute bottled water to affected residents at Crosby High School and from the Municipal Stadium parking lot from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Tuesday. The city distributed 32,877 gallons on Sunday and 43,699 early in the day on Monday.
Water was distribution halted for several hours on Monday as the city awaited 10 more trucks of water and planned on continuing distribution at the two locations from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Monday.
The mayor said at a press conference on Monday from the Waterbury Water Department that he hopes to get water up and running in short order. The city’s East and North Ends are the parts of the city most affected by the water main break that initially took place on Friday night. The city’s Bunker Hill section and neighboring Watertown had water returned on Saturday night.
Officials said the water could start to flow early as Monday night, but the water will not be safe to use without boiling until the city tests the water. They said the water has to flow until it is clear and then it will be tested. Testing takes 24 hours.
Pernerewski stopped short of giving a timeline when water will flow and the boil water advisory will be lifted. Although Bradley Malay, Waterbury’s superintendent of water, said the absolute earliest safe water will flow through the entire city would be sometime on Wednesday after taking the water to get tested sometime on Tuesday. He reiterated that everything would have to go perfectly for that to happen.
“We’re hopeful and fairly confident that they will come back as good results,” Malay said. “If not, it’ll be another 24 hours before we can lift the boil water notice.”
“I don’t have a definite time, and I don’t want to give people hope that it’s going to happen at 6 p.m. or 8 p.m. or 10 p.m. But we are moving in that direction,” Pernerewski added on Monday afternoon. “We fully expect by tomorrow that the water will be flowing through those pipes.”
Pernerewski said even when the water starts flowing during those 24 hours when the city is getting the water tested, they will at least be able to flush their toilets. He reminded residents until the water is fully flowing and tested, anyone who has lost water or had a pressure drop below 25% is still on a boil advisory and should not be drinking the water.
“It’s been several days without water running through those pipes. As the water comes back on, it is going to be discolored. It’s going to have a lot of sediment in it when it starts flowing through the pipe,” Pernerewski said. “You’re going to need to let that run until it clears out.
“We would also ask people at this point to open your turn on your bathtub faucets and open them up,” he added. “We got to get air out of the line. Those lines are all full of air. You’ve got to get the air out of the line to make them work. Please open the bathtubs until you hear the air start stop gurgling through and it’s coming out with all water at that point. … The best thing to do is open your bathtub until it all gets going. The more people who can do that, the quicker the line will fill with water and become stabilized. You’ll help us get this up quicker.”
Aisling McGuckin, director of health at the Waterbury Health Department, also spoke on Monday and said city restaurants should not be open unless there is an alternative water source that is not sourced from the public water supply. She said those who continue to operate will be issued violation orders.
“FDA Food Code, which all food service establishments should be following to operate safely, they cannot operate under a boil water alert. End of story,” McGuckin said. “There was an interruption in service. Any interruption in service means that there’s a potential compromise in the quality of the water under the FDA food code, which is national food code. No food service operations can continue in those conditions unless they have an alternate water source that is not sourced from the public water supply.”