Halifax County commissioners Monday voted to credit all public utilities water customers for 10 days due to the water issues that occurred mainly in the western part of the county.

Commissioner Thomas Barrett, who made the motion, said the amount represents $12.10 off their water bill.

Barrett’s motion, which came after an update from Public Utilities Director Christopher Williams, passed unanimously with a second cast by Jimmie Silver. “This is an exception,” he said. “Not every time your water goes out are we going to credit a bill. This was an extraordinary exception.”

Williams told the board that when he came in Monday morning, all the water towers “were out of the red. You’ve been hearing a lot of references to them being in the red, but this morning when I got here, our repairs were successful and the system is recovering.” 

He added, however, “Just because they’re out of the red doesn’t mean that we’re operating at normal levels like we want them, but they’re in much better shape than they were on Friday.”

The Perfect Storm

Williams told the board he titled his update The Perfect Storm because "it really has been a series of events that got us to where we’re at.”

On January 19, the Hollister tower began showing signs of trouble and the search for a leak began. 

Then, the Medoc tower and Aurelian Springs tower began to show signs of a problem a week later. “This makes sense because Aurelian Springs feeds Medoc, and Medoc feeds Hollister. All the water transferred between these towers is by gravity flow. There are no pumps in this portion of the distribution system, so we ramped up our efforts to locate the issue.”

Then came the weather issues. “I took the liberty of coming in to look for leaks during the adverse weather conditions, thinking that anything not frozen over that constitutes running water would make it easier to find a leak.”

That wasn’t the case, he said. “More winter weather arrives and the tower levels continue to decline. Our Summit Tower, all the way up on Highway 158, became impacted by the event. Basically, it depleted our reserve volumes in the towers.”

Isolating the pressure zone

On February 2, Williams made the decision to isolate the entire pressure zone covered by the Medoc and Hollister towers. “This was the only way I had to salvage the water remaining in the rest of the system.”

Public Utilities notified the state Department of Environmental Quality and issued a low-pressure and boil water advisory for the Medoc and Hollister areas. “This decision allowed the Summit and Aurelian Springs towers to recover some.”

Then, a systematic search for the leak began by “strategically opening and closing valves to isolate small portions of the system that would help us pinpoint this leak,” Williams told the board. “This process was significantly delayed by the snow and ice that was piled up on the side of the road, covering our valve risers. We were digging through nine to 15 inches of icebergs at most locations.”

On February 5, Public Utilities found a valve at the intersection of Main Street and Highway 561 in Hollister was the culprit. “It was not leaking to the surface and appears to have been traveling below the asphalt to a culvert and directly into a creek, making it very difficult to find.”

Williams said the isolation of the valve allowed tower levels to stabilize but they were not able to rise back to normal operating levels immediately. “In medical terms, our system was on life support at this time. By reaching those minimum system pressures, we were able to conduct a sampling route.” 

On February 7, the results of that sampling showed all was clear and the boil advisory was lifted. “That was a key milestone in getting people back to being able to drink and consume water.”

Another complication

During the search for the leak, Weldon was having its own issues with its distribution system and had to limit the amount of water the county could use for eastern area customers. “That meant that in addition to trying to provide enough water to cover the leak in Hollister, the Roanoke Rapids Sanitary District would need to also provide enough water to supply the portion of the system that was not on life support.”

Instead of being able to pull additional water from the RRSD, Williams said, “We were sending water to the eastern half of the county and in a sense we were juggling water to stay alive. With these towers on life support, we did not have enough reserve capacity to survive a main break.”

One more blow

On February 4 and 5, subcontractors installing fiber optics struck unmarked water lines, which depleted what little water the county had been able to put back into the system. “We then decided to expand the boil water advisory to all of Halifax County. On February 5, Chairman (Vernon) Bryant enacted a state of emergency that prohibited construction activities in the road rights-of-way that may impact our water lines.”

Warren County Public Utilities opened an emergency connection to help the recovery in the northwest portion of the county, and the RRSD supplied between 3.3 million to 3.5 million gallons during the event.

“I want to take this opportunity to publicly thank the Weldon water system, the Roanoke Rapids Sanitary District, and Warren County Public Utilities for their efforts and assistance throughout this event,” Williams said.

Lessons learned

Williams said the event showed that the county needs a better means of disseminating information during emergency situations. A meeting is scheduled for Thursday to discuss that plan.

He also stated the county needs to prioritize its plan to install a booster pump station at the Aurelian Springs tower. “Had this station been in place, we would have been able to distribute water more effectively into our system. This project is already included in our to-do list.”

And, Williams said, “I should have isolated the Medoc and Hollister pressure zone earlier and not put such a strain on the upstream portions of our distribution system. At the time, my thought process was to keep as many people with water as long as possible. However, in hindsight, I believe the extremely low levels in the Summit and Aurelian Springs towers that resulted from that approach led to a longer recovery time and also impacted more customers than desirable.”