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Harlan County Judge-Executive Dan Mosley along with Kentucky State Senator Scott Madon and Harlan County District 5 Magistrate James Howard held a press conference on Friday, May, 2, to address an ongoing water outage in the Black Mountain Utility District (BMUD).

According to Harlan County Emergency Management, a prolonged water outage has affected the Dayhoit, Tremont, Fresh Meadows, Happy Top, Wallins Creek, Coldiron, and Molus communities in Harlan County.

“Thank you for joining us here for an update on a prolonged water outage situation that we have been experiencing in the District 5 area of Harlan County,” Mosley said. “On Sunday afternoon, I was notified there had been a break somewhere in the BMUD system that had drained the tank on Daniel’s Mountain.”

Mosley explained several of the tanks in the impacted areas still had water in them at that time, but customers were starting to lose water in the higher elevations.

“By Sunday evening, many in the area were without water,” Mosley said. “On Sunday, crews worked all day in the Dayhoit/Fresh Meadows area trying to find the problem.”

Mosley noted a problem was identified near the US 119 and KY 840 intersection on Monday. That line was repaired, returning water to the Watts Creek area. However, after that repair was made, it was determined this was not the reason the Wallins Creek area was without water. On Tuesday, there was concern that a major line break may have occurred near the Dayhoit area.

“They spent most of the day Tuesday checking that area, only to find a small leak,” Mosley said. “It was not the 140 to 170 gallon a minute leak that is causing the issue with this system.”

Mosley explained remedies were attempted, but did not fix the issue.

“Once that failed and we realized that wasn’t working, on Tuesday evening I declared a state of emergency,” Mosley said. “Longer than three days without water becomes a crisis.”

Via the emergency declaration, Mosley requested the assistance of qualified water district personnel from surrounding areas in the Commonwealth of Kentucky for the purpose of assisting the Black Mountain Utility District in finding the main line break which has resulted in customers experiencing water outages beginning on April, 26. Additionally, Mosley requested water be provided by the state to supplement a tractor trailer load of water the Harlan County Fiscal Court has acquired to distribute to the impacted BMUD customers.

Mosley explained while multiple issues have been located and dealt with, there is still significant water loss within the system.

“A large break was discovered in the Sutton Drive area of Dayhoit,” Mosley said. “It goes under the railroad tracks over into the Dayhoit community…This is a line that is 14 feet deep that is in a casing that goes under the CSX railroad track. Just getting to that line to get it out of the casing and get it replaced has been an extensive project. It began yesterday, and it is ongoing at this moment…I can confirm the line that came out of that casing was separated, which was causing a significant leak. It was the most significant leak that has been found to this point. However, it is believed there is still something much greater in this system that is causing the outage to continue.”

Mosley said following that repair, it is likely there still will be approximately a 110 – 120 gallon a minute leak somewhere in the system.

Following further discussion, Mosley stated as of Friday afternoon, the break causing the majority of the leakage from the system had not yet been located. Personnel from Kentucky Rural Water are currently in the area searching for leaks.

“This is an evolving situation,” Mosley said. “I do want to say if the break was found today, I cannot give you a definitive timeline, all that does is create false hope. I just want to be level and be as transparent as possible about this situation.”