The water treatment plant at the Prince of Wales Islands’ biggest community has left residents with discolored and dirty water while others are left with no water whatsoever. The officials in Craig issued a boil-water notice on this evening and have asked residents to save water “as as they can.”
Craig’s city administrator has said that crews are working on fixing the issue however it’s not clear when the water is safe to drink again.
On Sunday afternoon, Craig residents started to observe issues with their water supply.
Jacqueline Vaughan got home around 4:00 p.m. and was a bit confused when she turned on her tap.
“Wow it was coming out in the hue of bright vibrant yellow, deep, bright yellow,” she declared. “So I couldn’t believe it. ”
June Durgan’s water is dark brown color, and she’s scared to boil it. Durgan claims she’s seen others posting photos of water with white sediment as well as bright blue, or dark brown water.
“I’ve been here all my life and have just passed 66 and have never witnessed anything like this before,” she told me.
Brian Templin is Craig’s city administrator. He told the media that pressure began to ease off on Sunday night.
“We were experiencing a loss of water pressure in a majority of the town,” Templin explained. “Some areas aren’t receiving any water, while other areas have lower pressure. Certain areas are dirty or dirty water which has somehow made it into the system because of the lack of water within the water system.”
Craig Public Works crews were capable of getting one of the four treatment systems operating to full capacity the night before.
In the morning of Monday Two other systems were operating at a limited capacity. A fourth is scheduled to be to life late on Monday or in the early hours of Tuesday. The plant will not function normally until the two of these systems receive new filters. Templin does not know when this will occur.
Templin claimed there had been minor problems in the water treatment process over the past couple of weeks. He added that the crews had been looking to address the issues that led to the outage.
“The short of it is that the filtering media in our treatment trains is in need of replacing,” he said. “But for this, naturally we need to close water treatment and we have Public Works Department has been trying to prepare to shut down water treatment. However, those media that are clogged as well as the blocked filter media within the treatment trains has slowed our capacity for treatment of water.”
Templin told reporters around noon Monday that due to low pressure across the system, some regions are less fortunate than others.
“The points within the system that are further out are less water-logged,” he said. “And those points within the system which are higher up are less water-logged. However, beyond this, it’s pretty scattered across Craig.”
Templin said that crews will be searching for leaks in the system when water returns to working.
However, some residents think they’ve been left in the darkness. Vaughan is the one who has the yellow water, stated that the city was responsible to its residents to inform them particularly since there have been problems with the plant in preceding months.
“We’re not getting answers from city officials,” she said. “And I believe there’s a crisis of a magnitude to be honest because of this.”
Durgan who’s tub is awash with brown and murky water, shared a similar feeling.
“I believe that they realized they wouldn’t be able to solve it right from the beginning,” she said. “But no matter I’m definitely not an enthusiastic person with the city we live in right now.”
Templin said that the crews are on the job 24/7 to get the systems up and running back up, and prior to this outage was over, there was no information available to distribute.
“We had to deal with a few issues with the system but we weren’t at the level where there was information to release to the general public” he added. “The incident that occurred yesterday was unexpected.”
Templin advised residents to not hesitate to report leaks that they spot throughout the city, including their homes.
As long as the boil water notice is removed, residents are advised to boil any water used for cooking, drinking or for teeth-brushing at minimum 2 minutes. The warning is in effect till the Department of Environmental Conservation determines that the water is safe for drinking.
Klawock’s city hall has opened it’s doors for Craig residents that need to fill buckets of water today. Craig City Schools are shut during the day and so is the library for the public as well as the youth center. Craig Tribal Association offices and Whale Tail Pharmacy.
