Freezing causes countywide outage
BY ROGER SMITH
MOUNTAIN CITIZEN
INEZ — Martin County is in the throes of a severe water crisis as crews work tirelessly around the clock to address widespread leaks in the public water system caused by sub-freezing temperatures. The emergency prompted a countywide shutdown Saturday, leaving all Martin County residents without running water.
Craig Miller, manager of Alliance Water Resource, announced late Monday that water service had been restored to a significant portion of the county’s residents. However, the ordeal continues for some, like Elizabeth Cook of Big Branch Road, who has been without water for 14 days.
Subzero temperatures arrived mid-month and led to the freezing and breaking of water lines, causing leaks that depleted the clear well tanks at the water treatment plant. The raw water intake pump that supplies water to the system froze solid at Tug River and a crust of ice formed on the Curtis Crum Reservoir about 6 to 8 inches deep.
The impact on residents has been profound. Ida Mae Goforth of Pilgrim saw her water service resume early Monday after a seven-day outage.
Martin County Judge/Executive Lon Lafferty said the weather exposed the urgent need to repair the old system that dates back to the 1960s and includes asbestos lines and equipment that should have been replaced decades ago.
Upon being elected to office in November 2022, Lafferty vowed that fixing the water system would be his main goal. Last year he went to Gov. Andy Beshear to request $60 million to fix the water.
Gov. Beshear recently announced his proposed budget includes $12 million for Martin County water projects. However, state legislators must agree to the proposal.
“If our General Assembly works together, we can get this done,” Beshear said.
Judge Lafferty hopes legislators will support the funding for Martin County in the state’s final budget.
“Our people need and deserve this,” said Lafferty.
To Miller, the funding would be an opportunity to address some of the most problematic areas.
“I’m really excited about that,” said Miller. “It’s an incredible thing that the governor is trying to do. I think Martin County should be a line item in the budget. We need that money and I hope it’s just the start.”
Miller shed light on the grueling effort by the water district workers to manage the crisis.
“We don’t have one guy who has worked less than 140 hours the last two weeks,” Miller said.
For the workers, it started when a compressor on the raw water intake pump malfunctioned.
“Because the pump was down, it froze solid,” Miller said. “We couldn’t run it until it thawed.”
In the meantime, residents were worried about their pipes freezing and were letting their faucets run.
“Normally we could handle that,” said Miller. “Unless we have a large freeze where things just start to break and burst.”
The bursting started with two large leaks in a 6-inch line on Enterprise Drive in Inez. Another break on a 20-foot section of 8-inch main line on Blacklog Road followed, along with other line breaks throughout the county. The crew also replaced about 50 customer meters and multiple service lines that had frozen.
“When the thaw happened, everything that had frozen broke free,” said Miller.
While leaks drained the clear well tanks at the plant, the ice on the Crum Reservoir began restricting water flow through the gravity feeds that supply the plant.
By Friday, the clear wells had only 1-1/2 feet of water.
“We just couldn’t sustain the levels in the clear wells,” said Miller. “And because of the hydraulics in the system, when the clear wells drop below a certain level, it’s almost impossible to come back up. We tried.”
After working all night Friday, Miller and his crew made the call Saturday to shut down the system to build the water level in the clear wells.
“We had customers already out of water, and we weren’t going to be able to get those customers back in water anytime soon,” said Miller.
With the plant shut down overnight, the level in the clear wells reached 33 feet by Sunday morning.
“As soon as everyone got in Sunday morning, we started moving water,” said Miller. “And it takes all day to get water to all the tanks. The guys got water to the last tank at around 1 a.m. Monday.”
Miller said the workers struggled to fill the Marcus Wells tank. “The level just wasn’t coming up.”
On Monday, they received a call reporting a large main line break at Eden West. Once that was repaired, there was no problem filling the Marcus Wells tank.
“It has more water in it today than it’s had in a while,” said Miller.
Miller said the resident had called the billing office around 5 p.m. Friday and left a voice message.
“He made an effort, but unfortunately, we don’t have the ability to check those messages until Monday,” said Miller. “So I discussed that with him and talked about our emergency line. Feel free to call anytime. But he made an effort, and it got lost in the shuffle.”
He added, “People want answers, so one of the things that I’ve been trying to do a better job of is keeping people aware of what’s happening. We tried to post an alert every single time we brought a tank online. We want people to know where we are. People pay for a product and expect to get it, and it’s our job to do and something we always want to do.”
Miller mentioned that it is difficult to give people a specific time of restoration in a situation like the previous two weeks.
“It changes constantly,” he said. “If I say, ‘We’re going to get a zone on,’ then a line breaks, that zone isn’t going to come on. If I tell someone they aren’t going to be out of water, then the electricity goes out, what’s going to happen?”
Currently, the raw water intake is working 100%.
“We have to do everything in our power to have every tank in this county full before the second week in February,” said Miller. “There’s another cold snap coming.”
Miller’s plan for restoring water to Cook and Big Branch residents is to temporarily bypass a damaged booster station and replace the damaged equipment.