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The city of Evarts has been facing issues with its water plant for some time, and recently a four-day water outage resulted in the city declaring a state of emergency during a special called meeting.

Woodrow Fields, the chief water plant operator for the city of Evarts, supplied some further information on the city’s water issues during a telephone interview.

“We’ve had some issues the last week with some mud getting into the intakes at the river source,” Fields explained. “We had a rain that came on (the previous) Monday and it rained almost all day, and then late Monday evening into Tuesday morning, it looked like there was a mudslide or something that had occurred up river because the river became super muddy all of a sudden, it wasn’t a gradual thing.”

Fields noted the mud forced the city to shut off the river pumps, which help supply the city with water.

“When we turned the river pumps off, there wasn’t enough well and mine water to keep up with the demand, so tank levels got extremely low,” Fields explained. “We couldn’t put that turbid water through the water plant without it being in excess and getting past the filters and some of that color getting in the system. That’s what resulted in us having to put a tier one notification out through the radio station and different avenues to get word to everybody there was a water issue.”

Fields pointed out the issue is resolved and had actually cleared up in about two days.

“It took us a few days to get the boil water advisory lifted,” Fields said. “We wanted to make sure that the water that had gotten through the filters and into the system was out of the system, so the samples we took would be representative of what was coming through the plant at the time. So, along with my thoughts and the state’s request, we waited until Monday to get samples.”

Fields mentioned the samples require up to a day to process and the samples must be at the lab within eight hours after collection.

“You can run a sample only on either 18 or 24 hour intervals,” Fields said. “We opted for the 18 hours…so that would be six hours less time that people had to wait before we got those results.”

Fields explained the boil water advisery was declared as a precaution due to discoloration (turbitidy) of the water.

“We caught it quickly enough that the whole system didn’t get inundated with that turbid water, but it did get a lot of water in the system and there were many customers that did see discolored water,” Fields said.

According to Fields, there have been no confirmed health issues caused by the water. He noted people should report any water issues they have to the proper authorities.

“We’re not opposed to people calling the Division of Water and state offices,” Fields said. “We’re in the process of trying to get funding for a new water plant. So, if people do want to call, it’s not going to hurt us, it’s going to help.”

Fields stated calling the correct officials is important.

“When people do call the right people – state offices, Hal Rogers, Governor Beshear, our local representatives – that’s only going to bolster our point that we need a new facility…if they don’t know the telephone numbers, we’ll gladly give them to them. We’re working in conjunction with different state agencies looking for funding for a new facility, and we want the voices of the people to be heard.”

Fields said as of Tuesday, Nov. 28, all the water issues were resolved. Additionally, the city is working to improve the notification process for any future problems with the water system.

“We are looking to implement an all-call system similar to what is used by the County Schools within the next few weeks,” Fields said. “It will help get the word out about boil water advisories and things of that nature to make sure there isn’t anybody ingesting the water. If you are a customer of the city of Evarts, make sure we have your updated telephone information so that when we do get that system up and running, people can be called and messages left on answering machines and voice mails so we can readily get the information out and it doesn’t catch anybody unaware.”