Water Main Break Leads to Daylong Boil-Water Advisory

A large water main break in the southwest quadrant of Hampton led to a daylong boil-water advisory from the City of Hampton last week. 

City workers began repairing the water main break early Wednesday evening, May 15, working until 3 a.m., through a thunderstorm. 

“It’s an 8-inch water main. It had a pretty good break in it. Typically, they have to dig through pavement and dig down until they find the break and in this case, there was a storm sewer concrete pipe on top of the water main so they had to remove the storm sewer pipe to get to the water main,” City Manager Ron Dunt said. “It was big enough to where most of the town had low water pressure and we asked people to conserve.” 

The pipe was repaired the morning of May 16, but the city had to have a sample of water tested. A boil-water advisory was announced by the city that morning. 

In a press release, Ron Dunt wrote “The City of Hampton is working with Joel McWilliams of FC Emergency Management to try to acquire some pallets of bottled water for our community to ensure daycares, health facilities, schools and citizens have access to drinking water until our test results come back for our drinking water. The water main is repaired but we are required to submit and pass a water test prior to lifting the precautionary boil order. Water samples will go to the lab this morning but there is an 18 hour minimum wait period. The bottom line is that the soonest the boil order will be lifted is tomorrow but it all depends on test results. I will update you on the situation as information becomes available.”

At 1:30 p.m., Dunt and several others met at the Franklin County Fairgrounds, where they distributed bottled water to residents who stopped by.

“We distributed roughly 400 cases of water at the fairgrounds from 1:30 to p.m. yesterday,” Dunt said. “It was a fairly steady stream of vehicles although not heavy. We also delivered to a handful of businesses and homebound that requested some.”

Each case had 32 bottles of water. 

The boil advisory was lifted the morning of May 17.