“We need to do better to communicate with you and we are going to do better,” Cohen said.
About 9:30 p.m. Friday, the city water maintenance crew was called to investigate a water main break on Manchester Road between Cambridge and Autumn drives, according to a report the Middletown City Council received on Tuesday. A crew leader notified the Ohio Utilities Protection Service to have other utility lines marked before digging. Two hours later, the OUPS crew arrived.
City crews completed the four-hour repair work on the 12-inch water transmission line between the Kensington Pump Station and the Manchester Water Tower at about 4 a.m. Saturday and began flushing the main.
At 4:30 a.m., a pump problem was reported at the pump station. Pressure and pumping was restored at 5:30 a.m., and the plant manager was notified about the main break and pressure loss.
The boil advisry was publicly communicated at 12:20 p.m. Saturday, a little more than thee hours after the plant manager determined an advisory was necessary.
City water personnel hand-delivered notices to a small area requiring lead service information about 2:30 p.m. Saturday. Water was being tested for contaminants in the system, and samples were processed during the afternoon and require 24 hours to process. City officials responded to social media inquiries as they came in.
On Sunday, city officials sent out notifications on the CodeRED system, which has 27,000 subscribers and costs the city about $7,000 per year to operate, said Shelby Quinlivan, city communications manager.
Cohen said there was “some delay interfacing with the CodeRED system and the CodeRED system did not leave voicemails with all residents as they were supposed to do.”
The CodeRED system’s text feature was problematic during a later notification.
About 4:30 p.m. Sunday, water testing results were received indicating no contamination in the system, and the boil advisory was canceled through CodeRED, the news media and the city’s social media platforms.
Cohen has tasked the Public Works Department to work on new policies and procedures for when supervisors are notified, better training opportunities to get boil advisories draft quicker, and to see if the Ohio Utilities Protection Service response could be faster. Cohen said she would like to determine if there is a better system than CodeRed for these situations.
She said the city’s water billing system does not have the capability to autodial residents in these situations. Cohen also said that she will follow up with media about getting boil advisories added to alert residents.
Mayor Nicole Condrey, who has been promoting the CodeRED system in recent weeks and encouraging residents to opt-in, questioned if there was a lack of training on the system.
“It seems like we did not use it properly,” Condrey said.
Cohen said there needs to be better training on the system. She also said with the turnover in city staff, “there were not sufficient policies and procedures in place for how to activate the system and when it should be utilized.”
She said there will be more updated information and training for all staff to try and remove that bottleneck.
Vice Mayor Joe Mulligan said the boil advisory “revealed some shortcomings” in the notification system.
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