Gladewater city officials have announced the following:
We know this is a very difficult time for all of our citizens. We are doing our best to resolve water service issues across the community. In an effort to accomplish this, we will be taking a necessary measure to make progress.
The system pressure will now fall to zero for everyone tonight. We will be shutting off the supply pumps at the water treatment plant.
We are having difficulty finding leaks which would be significantly impacting the current supply demand. The leaks that we have found and repaired or found and marked for future repair have been small. We need increased water pressure. With system pressure at zero (pumps off), we will be able to gain headway overnight versus the existing demand by allowing our tanks to fill to normal operating conditions.
We will turn the pumps back on between 8 am and 9 am tomorrow (02/19) morning to begin filling the towers and bringing system pressure to the desired level in our search for leaks.
Our chemical feed also continues to have freezing issues. With temperatures warming, we hope that the plant will be operating under normal conditions by Saturday or Sunday.
Water leak repairs will be ongoing in the days ahead as they are discovered. Once again, these repairs require staff to be subjected to extreme cold and wet conditions. We will move as quickly and safely as we can.
The Truman W Smith Center and nursing homes have been notified.
We will notify citizens via Nixle and social media sites, such as the City of Gladewater and The Gladewater Mirror FB pages, once the pumps are back online.