WELLINGTON, Ohio — An early morning water break in the village of Wellington has caused a boil alert to be issued and residents to potentially go two or three days without drinkable water.
According to Wellington Mayor Hans Schneider, as of 10:45 a.m. on Saturday, the village is now getting water from an emergency tie in with Rural Water. "We will start feeding the system and pressuring the lines so we should have flushable water and shower water through out the entire village later today. Some may have tap water and flushing ability now."
Scheider posted a series of updates on Facebook announcing the water break. At 4:15 a.m., he wrote that the village "has experienced a system wide water break that has resulted in a complete loss of water throughout the system and storage tanks." Schneider declared a boil alert and advised residents to drink bottled water until further notice.
Two hours later, Schneider added that the village had found the leak. He told residents to turn off their hot water heaters to save the heating elements if their tank is empty.
"If residents have water in their tank, they should conserve it. This water outage for drinkable water could last 2-3 days," he wrote.
At 8:00 a.m., Schneider announced that Wellington had secured bottled water to distribute to residents behind the Town Hall, effective immediately.
That led to the 10:45 announcement from Schneider that flushable water and shower water is expected to return to the village sometime on Saturday. "Drinkable water will take a little while longer though so the boil water policy will be in effect until further notice. We have gone through four pallets of water and have more coming in this morning and afternoon. Thanks for your patience," he wrote.