LEWISBURG, W.Va. — Business owners in Greenbrier County were trying to adjust Monday to having no water.
“We are going to limit our menu frankly to things that don’t require very much water,” Mike Sheridan, owner of When Pigs Fly Barbeque said. “We are going to use disposable plates and silverware and we’ll haul in enough water to wash pots and pans and things of that nature.”
Most restaurants in the area are shut down after several thousand gallons of diesel fuel spilled into a tributary of the Greenbrier River Friday night. The incident caused the Lewisburg water plant to close its intakes and go to reserve water from storage. The supply was exhausted by Sunday and residents on the municipal water system are now forced to rely on bottled water for their needs.
Several restaurants were closed Monday and some were partially open. The Wendy’s in Lewisburg, for example, had its drive-thru open for customers.
Sheridan at When Pigs Fly Barbeque is able to cope because his business has some experience in this sort of thing.
“For years we’ve operated as mobile barbecue. We’ve spent many a day operating out of a trailer in the middle of a parking lot,” he said. “We have procedures set up that allow us to work quite safely with hauled water.”
As the spill is cleaned up, most restaurants and other establishments have been idled until the water service returns to normal. There’s no word on just how long that might take. Until then, Sheridan plans to stay in operation and provide assistance.
“We’ll try to help people out the best we can,” he said. “We think a lot of restaurants will be closed and most people probably can’t cook very conveniently at home.”
Sheridan compared the situation to the derecho in 2012 when all across West Virginia the freak storm knocked out electrical service on a mass scale. Sheridan was a member of the volunteer fire department at the time and helped hand out bottled water.
“It’s a different group of people. Back then it was people who had their power out and couldn’t pump water from their wells,” he said. “This time it’s the opposite, it’s all the people in town who have power, but they don’t have any water.”
Sheridan added he was pleased with how the town of Lewisburg had handled this situation.
“The city has done a fantastic job,” he said. “They got the system turned off before it was contaminated, which would have been terrible. They’ve done an excellent job of communicating with people. I have nothing but high praise for the City of Lewisburg for how they’ve handled this situation.”