Hinton James and Ram Village 5 residence halls experienced a scheduled water outage Tuesday night, leaving many students without running water.
Orange Water and Sewer Authority — which provides water services to the Carrboro-Chapel Hill community — placed the dorms under a boil-water advisory once the water was restored Wednesday morning. The advisory will remain in effect until testing can be completed, which is expected to conclude Wednesday night.
“The pipe work finished around 5:30 a.m. Wednesday morning, but as a precaution, the dorms were placed under the boil-water advisory to ensure no contaminants got into the water during the replacement,” said Linda Low, OWASA communications and community relations officer. “Generally, there is no need to be concerned. The advisory is just a precaution, but this is why we provided the bottled water.”
About 1,200 residents were advised to cook, drink and brush their teeth with bottled water provided by the OWASA contractor and distributed by UNC Housing. Those living in the affected dorms were notified of designated pick-up zones for the bottled water.
UNC Housing also informed affected residents that OWASA suggested boiling all tap water before consumption or use.
“It was very annoying," Sam Anthony, a Hinton James resident, said. "They shut the water off at 11 p.m., but I don’t know anyone who goes to bed by then."
Beginning in late May, OWASA began a pipe replacement project on Manning Drive, which is expected to be completed by mid-October.
Immediately following this project, OWASA will transition to replacing a water main pipe on Country Club Road, which runs through North Campus.
“We complete pipe replacement to ensure the system gets maintained well and remains resilient to mitigate potential cracks or breaks,” Low said. “It was simply time to replace this portion of pipe that was on Manning Drive.”
