As many as 2,500 city water customers could have lost some pressure Wednesday, though likely most didn’t even know.
AES Ohio, formerly known as DP&L, had hired a contractor to put an electric line in the ground near Cook’s Boulevard on the city’s north side.
“While they were putting that line in, they hit on of the water lines we had put on Cooks Boulevard for future development,” Marysville Public Service Director Jeremy Hoyt said.
He said that when the contractor hit the line, portions of the system lost pressure.
Hoyt said that about 10:45 a.m., he received a call from officials at the Marysville School district reporting that several school buildings had lost some water pressure. He said potentially every customer north of U.S. 33 could have been impacted, but it is difficult to know since many didn’t even know something had happened.
“We were able to get out there and quickly isolate the situation and get everything put right,” Hoyt said.
He explained that the line AES hit was a stub, installed for future connectivity and wasn’t in use.
“Since it was just a stub for future development, we were able just to close that valve,” Hoyt said, adding that some water did go into a field in the area.
He said the system was operational and most customers were fully restored by 11 a.m.
Hoyt said the city will likely fix the break and send an invoice to AES or the contractor.
“It should be a minor fix,” Hoyt said.
He said there is no need for customers to boil water or do anything at this point since the line was not contaminated and the system did not depressurize.
He said city water officials will use the incident to learn.
“We were able to identify, isolate and fix the problem in 15 minutes so that seems like a pretty good plan we have in place, but we are going to reconvene and look at it to make sure we have the proper procedure and there isn’t anything we could have done better,” Hoyt said.