ORANGEBURG, S.C. — According to the Orangeburg Department of Public Utilities, the agency is responding to 578 service calls due to this week's cold weather. It reports 444 of these calls have been related to customers' broken property lines.
“It has been a very long time since we’ve seen any situation like this. Matter fact our records don’t show a situation where we had that many water line breaks in that short a period of time," said Orangeburg DPU public relations officer Randy Etters.
He says these issues are affecting customers' water pressure, but reports there have been no water main breaks. In the meantime, customers are asked to turn off their water valves or request a crew member to turn off their meters.
“These events are all localized. They are to the individual property owners and it’s generally been spigots that were not wrapped, water lines that were exposed, and situations where the water lines got cold enough to rupture," said Etters.
Some residents say they've gone three days without water.
“The water was shooting up in the field. We didn’t even know. My daughter said your water, it’s something wrong with it, it’s shooting up in the field. So DPU came out, they checked it, and tell us what we had to do and we did that and now the problem is solved," said resident Earline Jenkins.
DPU says on average, its water plant produces about 6.5 million gallons of water a day for customers. During the peak of the breakage, the plant was producing about 17 million gallons a day.
The department brought in workers from various divisions to meet the needs of customers. To report an issue, contact DPU.