There was a large water main break on the 16" transmission line that crosses under 339 Pine St on 2/15/20. The size of the pipe and the size of the break, combined with location of this pipe (at a lower elevation in the system) resulted in a pressure drop across a widespread area of our system. While we have undertaken a major effort over the last 3 years to reline/replace miles of water mains before they break, this event underscores the challenge of inherited, aging infrastructure and the need to continue our infrastructure reinvestment. We have another year of active water main rehab work planned for summer 2020.

We issued a precautionary boil water advisory at approximately 2:30 PM on 2/15/20, for the low service water system in Burlington and limited parts of South Burlington. These boil water advisories are, in part, due to a recent change in state requirements mandating that precautionary advisories be issued when such depressurizations occur and that confirmatory sampling is required to lift them. We have protocols in place (maintenance of positive pressure during break repair) to reduce the likelihood of needing to issue a boil water under most water break conditions. However, until we were able to isolate this particular break around 4PM on 2/15/20, we were not able to maintain system pressures, resulting in the advisory.

The pipe repair was complete by midnight on 2/15/20 and all required water samples taken by 3 AM on 2/16/20 and sent for testing. The sample results confirmed the water was safe to drink and the alert was lifted at 3:30 AM on 2/17/20. Outside of the special sampling taken to lift the advisory, drinking water is also tested throughout the day at the drinking water plant and weekly throughout the distribution system.

If you are experiencing an urgent water issue then please call Water Resources at 802-863-4501. That number is answered after hours and we can dispatch a response team or provide an update about an ongoing water emergency. If we are experiencing a high volume of calls then you may receive a busy signal. We are working to update our system so a recording will play giving initial information about the issue when all lines are busy. Please do not use See Click Fix to report water emergencies or concerns that require an immediate response. We are only able to view and respond to See Click Fix requests during business hours (Monday-Friday, 8-4:30). Water Resources is using VT-Alert to send major urgent announcements which allows us to send robocalls to landlines and robocalls to VT-Alert registered cell phones/landlines; and text/emails to VT-Alert registered users. We encourage you to sign up at www.burlingtonvt.gov/btv-alerts. In addition to VT-Alert, during urgent events, we keep the www.burlingtonvt.gov website and our social media