FLORENCE, SC (WBTW) – Florence city council met Monday for its regular council meeting. Council gave an update on the water lines in the city after a massive water shortage in the city last Friday.
Many people woke up with low or no water Friday. Since then, public works crews have been working 16-18 hour days, through the weekend to restore water pressure citywide.
City officials say there are more than 10 water line breaks that have been repaired or cut off. Public Works Director Michael Hemingway says after more than 12 hours on Friday, crews found a fire line froze and burst inside of an old manufacturing building, now used for storage.
“Approximately 15 million gallons that we can estimate at this time was released from our water system into the environment,” said Hemingway. “Once that main broke then water flows to that source of least resistance. The rest of the water system flowed to that one that broke. Then our elevated water tanks served as a source of additional pressure.”
The city is still working to restore water citywide. The South and West areas of the city may have low or no water.
“Right now we have staff in the field in both the Southernmost portion and West doing hydrant pressure and field pressure system checks to see where our low spots are and what we can do to correct those locations,” said Hemingway.
City council thanks, all of the public works crews for working in cold conditions to restore water.
Mayor Stephen Wukela says the city budgets for water line repairs in the utility. He does not believe it will be expensive.
“What we’re going to continue to do is monitor the system. Fix leaks as they appear. Continue to pressurize the system and it’s recovering,” said Wukela.
“The customers won’t get charged for that particular loss that will just be a loss we’ll have to absorb. We will have to make adjustments to our billing,” said Hemingway.
Public Works crews will continue to have 24-hour monitoring until Wednesday.
