ASHEVILLE, N.C. (WLOS) — Billy and Corrie Enright who live in southside Asheville, were a little shocked to hear that potable drinking water may be returning to their water tap by next Tuesday night.
“It’s very exciting,” said Corrie. “We had heard mid-December. We had been planning for another month at least.”
The couple have lived in Asheville for 15 years and met at UNC Asheville. They have four children, including a newborn, and have been navigating the water situation like every other family since the Helene floods.
“We’ve been thankful for our community center right down the road has had tons of bottled water. So we would go right down there and we’ve had family bring us water from out of town, so we’ve been really thankful for that,” said Corrie.
“Starting tomorrow, we will test a total of 120 points throughout our distribution system for total coliform, E. coli and chlorine residual,” said Clay Chandler, spokesperson for Asheville’s Water Resources Department.
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Chandler said the results should be back Tuesday and if they come back negative, the city will drop the boil water notice.
“If it is true and it does happen on Tuesday, like party, party, party!” said Abby Moore, general manager for Old Europe Pastries. “As a business, Old Europe is spending about $1,000 a week on water. It’s in our bathrooms, it’s in our kitchen. We have a different setup for our coffee machine. That’s how we’re doing all our espresso drinks.”
The added financial costs associated with potable water have gone into the thousands of dollars for businesses across the city. Many have been serving on paper plates and Styrofoam cups since the kitchen cannot use the tap water to clean.
Earlier this week, city staff took local media on a tour of the North Fork Dam’s treatment site. While the water remains above normal levels for turbidity, or dirt stirred in the reservoir post-Helene, the treatment site is able to filter the water. Testing has shown that the water exceeds EPA standards for it to be drinkable.
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Another element involves removing the tap-point to the raw untreated water in the reservoir; spokesman Clay Chandler said crews were working on Friday night. He said this was also a factor in why the treated water could not be deemed potable until that raw, untreated water connection to the reservoir was cut off. Raw reservoir water, Chandler said, has not been flowing into the pipes for a week.
This week, Chandler discussed levels of lead found in some testing of water going to several Asheville schools. All water fountains have been sealed off and Chandler has attributed the issue to residual lead particles that come from older pipes in buildings built before 1988.
The city has a water treatment process to help mitigate any lead that could come from pipes not tied to the Asheville water pipe system. However, the recommendation for anyone with a home built before 1988 is to run water for at least 30 seconds on taps that had water sitting in pipes overnight or for more than four hours.
The city has a page answering lead questions.
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