The water is back on in the Clinton Water Association area, repairs continue

MONONGALIA COUNTY, W.Va. — Water service has been restored in the Clinton Water Association area, and the boil water advisory has been lifted. However, the water conservation order remains in effect.

Speaking on WAJR’s “Talk of the Town,” Patrick Kirby, a representative and employee of Carline Excavating and Hauling, confirmed that water is back on and the storage tanks continue to refill. He advised customers to delay any major water usage until the tanks are fully replenished.

“We are back to normal operations, but we are asking business and residential customers to continue to conserve water through the end of the week,” Kirby said.

Over the course of about ten days spent investigating, identifying, and repairing leaks, crews discovered and addressed several additional issues beyond the original problem that caused the catastrophe. Once the full scope of the problems is understood, Kirby said that information will be shared with the customer base, which is estimated to be around 11,000 people.

“We identified multiple repairs and did identify the original situation that caused the loss of water originally,” Kirby said. ” We are still investigating specifically what caused that and I know people have questions and we’re getting to the bottom of that.”

The response to the problem involved coordination between the Public Service Commission (PSC), the Morgantown Utility Board (MUB), and the Rural Water Association. Support agencies such as Monongalia EMS and MECCA 911 assisted in delivering water to customers who were unable to travel to the two temporary distribution points that had been set up.

“We’re working with the appropriate state and local agencies to evaluate the Clinton Water Association response to the overall efforts over the last couple of weeks,” Kirby said. “So, we can do some after action reporting to everybody involved.”

One area Kirby expects to improve is communication. The association initially used its established methods but switched to flyers and even door-to-door notifications when those methods proved insufficient.

“We have sources that we’ve used historically including text lines, the lines in the office, and emergency pagers, but without having experienced something like this in quite some time this will help us upgrade those systems,” Kirby said.