Dayton water crisis: Outage, boil warning issues affect thousands in Montgomery County

Thousands of people in Dayton, Ohio were told to conserve water on Wednesday after an issue with the water system at Montgomery County Environmental Services, but services are predicted to return to normal. 

The issues started around 5 p.m. Wednesday, leaving some without access to water, according to a statement from the county. The location of the issue has been found, officials said. Outages and boil warnings are still in place across Montgomery County. 

On Thursday morning, officials said Dayton's Water Treatment plants are now pumping at full capacity and returning water to the system in impacted areas.

"This may take up to 8 hours to fill the entire system," city officials said. "To allow the system to fully stabilize, we ask customers to continue conserving water until receiving the notice to resume normal use."

According to the Dayton Daily News, the leak was discovered in pipes under the Great Miami River. More than 100 million gallons of water was wasted, the outlet reported. At its peak, the outage impacted 400,000 customers in Dayton and Montgomery County, the Dayton Daily News reported. 

At one point on Wednesday, Dayton was experiencing a "significant loss of water in the millions of gallons within our distribution system."

Crews checked water valves along major distribution lines and believed it was a river crossing.

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"It is highly possible due to the amount of water being lost, that the break and/or leak is at a river crossing; however, our crews continue to systematically check major lines and river crossing in an attempt to isolate the location of the break," officials said. "Because the river is at a very high level due to recent rain events and moving swiftly, it is also highly likely a break at this location would not be seen."

The location of the leak has not been disclosed to the public. If water was to be used, it needed to be boiled for at least 30 seconds.

"At this time both of the City’s water plants are pumping at increased capacity to bring the water system and elevated tanks back into service; however, the areas of the system that have been isolated to help track down the leak will still be out of water," a statement from the city said. 

The following cities within Montgomery county are not impacted by the precautionary boil water advisory: Cities of Oakwood, Huber Heights, Vandalia, Englewood, Miamisburg, Union, and West Carrollton.

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