CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Repairs to a broken main water line wrapped up in the early morning hours Thursday, but a boil water advisory remained in effect for thousands of West Virginia American Water Company customers living west of Charleston.
Confirmation of the completed repairs to the 36-inch transmission main came at 4:50 a.m. Thursday.
The outage caused damage to Route 25 near the pump station Tuesday night and left residents with no water or low water pressure from Dunbar to Culloden and Buffalo.
Water service, though, will not be fully restored immediately, according to Laura Jordan, spokesperson for WVAWC.
“For our customers who have experienced any type of water outage during this time, there will be a precautionary boil water advisory (even) when their service does come back on,” she said.
“We want customers to understand it’s not an instantaneous restoration.”
With the pipeline back in service, WVAWC planned to restore water pressure to impacted customers in a “systematic manner” with millions of gallons of water being pumped through miles of large pipeline to fill multiple water storage tanks.
Jordan said fill-up stations that were set up around the Kanawha Valley in Dunbar and west on Wednesday would remain open through Thursday.
A full list of distribution sites are as follows:
-Andrew Jackson Middle School in Cross Lanes
-Dunbar Plaza
-West Virginia State University
-Nitro High School
-West Side Volunteer Fire Department in St. Albans
-Eleanor Tech Center
-Winfield Courthouse
-Buffalo Fire Department
-Poca Fire Department
-Hurricane Fire Department
-Bancroft Fire Department
Repairs had originally been projected to be completed by Wednesday evening.
“We have the pipe and fitting in the hole right now. We do expect it will take a few more hours to complete the repairs and get the pipe back in service,” Jordan said on Wednesday night.
“We had estimated mid-evening. Now it looks like it will be later (Wednesday night) before it is complete.”