Photo: WSSC crews were on the case Friday night. Courtesy of B. Hefele.
UPDATE — The scene near Nolte Park was something out of Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”: Water, water everywhere, yet not a drop to drink.
On Friday night, as a summer storm raged outside, residents inside two East Silver Spring apartment complexes were dealing with dry taps and washers that wouldn’t fill.
Blame a busted valve under Easley Street near Cedar Street, Kim Knox, a spokesperson for the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission, said Monday.
The valve blew around 1:00 p.m. Friday after WSSC contractors, who were already on site, saw it wasn’t working properly. The crew got on the problem ASAP, but not before service to the Parkside Terrace and Silver Spring House apartment complexes circled the drain, Knox explained.
“I put a load in the laundry, paid for it, pressed the button, and … nothing,” Penguin reader and East Silver Springer Brian Hefele recalled in an email. “I had a pile of soapy, slightly wet clothes, and was out a buck twenty-five.”
Photo: Sweet, sweet water! Courtesy of B. Hefele.
Generally, WSSC distributes drinking water to affected residents if they believe repairs will take more than six hours, though crews have an extra two hours to get the water out there.
A water station was set up along Easley Street around 9:00 p.m., eight hours after the valve burst, Knox told The Penguin via telephone. More than 1,000 gallons of water were distributed, she said.
“Around 10:30 p.m., our maintenance guy came around telling everyone that the emergency water had landed. Fantastic!” Penguin reader Hefele wrote. “I found them [WSSC workers] handing out cases of six 1-gallon jugs from the back of a pickup. They seemed pretty sorry, ashamed that this was the case at all.”
Crews worked into the night, finally wrapping the repairs at 1:30 a.m. Saturday, Knox said. At 6:30 a.m., Hefele tested the tap in his kitchen.
“I gave it the quick see, feel, and taste routine,” he wrote. “Mmm, sweet, sweet tap water!”
Update: According to WSSC spokesperson Knox, potable water is distributed after six hours of no service. However, crews have an additional two hours to gather that potable water and set up a distribution station. — JD (Aug 27, 2009)
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I never heard of this 6+ hours without and you get free drinking water – wish I;d known that during our several previous outages earlier this year. My neighbors and I were “loaning” each other rain barrel water, pond water, etc. to flush our toilets and take spit baths.