Asheville expected to have water service restored today

Asheville expected to have water service restored today

Article gives the account of a chief of the Black Mountain Fire Department regarding the pipes that were broken during the flood. After the road overtop the pipes was washed out, they themselves were ruptured. Crews are working on reparing them, and expect to be done with the 36" line by noon today. The 24" line has already been fixed. Both pipes were metal, and yet 280' of the 36' pipe and 72' of the 24" pipe were ripped out. The pipes are said to have ruptured because after the ground around them was washed away, there was nothing to support them; causing them to burst. It is stated that 17" of rain fell in Black Mountain on Tuesday. Officials say that no pipe design could have prevented a rupture, not with that much water involved. Thousands of people were left without water when the pipes burst. On the Warren Wilson campus, students are using collected rainwater and water from an on-campus well to cook, drink, flush toilets, and clean themselves. Businesses have been forced to close from lack of usable water. The VA Medical Center has been without water since Wednesday morning, and has postponed all surgeries as a result. Asheville's water system as a whole is aging, and fixing it all is expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars and over 30 years. Some of the pipes leading out from the North Fork Resevoir have been a problem for years, on account of them being over a century old. These two lines of pipe run directly from the reservoir to Asheville. Plans to use the Bee Tree Reservoir and its water treatment plant went unused, as it doesn't produce nearly enough water to serve Asheville residents. The Bee Tree Plant also was not ready to operate at the time of this flood. The article is accompanied by a map showing where the pipes broke, along with a picture of the washed out road that caused them to break.

Newspapers.com

English

NEWS_166, NEWS_174

1,5