BECKLEY, W.Va. — Raleigh County emergency officials said Friday they are making good progress in the restoration of water service to homes throughout the county, but it will still be several days until full restoration.
Emergency Management Director John Zilinski said most of the lines in the Beckley Water System are restored with service, but they are finding problems with leaks on the customer side of the meter which continues to complicate the effort. Those homes where leaks are detected are having service shut off until repairs can be made, Zilinski said the water leaks have been substantial.
“Some of those homes have leaked over 100 to 300 thousand gallons of water on the service line going to their house,” he explained.
Such massive leaks cause a severe drain on the system and have slowed the effort to push water to outlying communities. Zilinski said they are starting to get those back in service as the rural tanks refill, but it’s a slow process. Crews were able to get water into the Sophia area which provided enough pressure to get water over Tams Mountain to Hotchkiss. But the progress was set back when an air pocket developed in the line.
“Some of them had water and then they didn’t have water. So they’re trying to bleed the lines,” he said.
The last rural area needing restoration is Route 3 from Trap Hill to Whitesville. The water service restoration is up to the Dameron community. Zilinski said the tank at Naoma was filling Friday.
“Each community down through there has a tank and in order to pressurize the system that tank has to have enough water. It takes overnight to fill it enough to start sending water down to the next community,” he siad.
The tank at Naoma was refilling on Friday. The last tank on the system will be the tank at Sundial. Zilinski said the Raleigh County PSD estimated that tank would take at least two more days to fill.
As of Friday, the customer outages in PSD service areas were around 400 homes. But Zilinski said Beckley Water was unable to give an accurate figure to their outages since they are very sporadic and are tied to the leaks discovered on the homeowner side of the meter as the water comes back on.