City of Williamsburg looking to restore water

A new line is replacing the nearly 50 year old main line under the Cumberland river that it broke.

Williamsburg Mayor Roddy Harrison says the day was going great setting up the new line, until they tried to connect it.

“We can not get the water off of us,” said Harrison. “There’s somewhere there’s water coming from somewhere and it’s got a lot of pressure on it. And so, they can’t open it up on one side because it would shoot above the bridge.”

What should have taken an hour took much longer. Because of this Harrison decided to shut down the plant, so they could find the problem.

Though this could cause more problems.

“Get this line fixed, turn the plant back on and it may cause some more outages for awhile,” said Harrison. “But I don’t know any other way to get this water off of us. We’ve just not been able to do that all day.”

The city says families with running tap water should boil their water for at least three minutes before using for cooking, drinking or making ice.

In the meantime, the city says the Williamsburg Fire Department is giving out free bottled water.

Citizens are able to drive up to the fire station to receive their cases of water.

“People are told to come by, we need I.D. because we want to keep it within the outage area,” said Fire Chief Larry Todd. “We’ll give them at least two cases of water per day.”

But once the line is fixed, when will people know they don’t have to boil their water?

“Well now that, it’s typically we can find out within 24 hours,” said Harrison. “My main thing right now is having people in water before Christmas.”

Chief Todd says the department will continue to give out water to those in need until the water line is fixed.