City of Heath addresses citywide water outage

The water issues experienced this morning were due to an electronic communication issue when an electrical surge occurred at the south water tower (behind City Hall) and at the Public Works facility, almost a mile away. This disrupted the main communication system as well as the secondary back-up alarm system (a separate auto-dialer).

That means the water towers were not communicating to the pump station, as well as not sending water level alarms to the utility operations manager. Water was going out of the towers, but the pumps were not getting the command to start pumping to replace the water.

City staff manually started the first pump this morning at 6:30 a.m, and an increase in water pressure returned. Shortly, City staff turned on a second pump, which began to re-fill the water towers. As of 11:34 a.m. this morning our towers are above their normal operating water level.

The City’s SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) is properly communicating between the water towers and the pump station.

At no time was water quality ever compromised. The water is and has been safe to drink.

Information courtesy of City of Heath