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Brad Bawcum (left) helps Jordan Mathis load bottled water into her car at the Ira First Church of God Tuesday evening. Because Ira Water Supply Corp. customers are under a boil-water notice, the company distributed two free cases of water to its customers.
Ira Water Supply Corp. (IWSC) officials offered a deal to its customers that was equal parts helping hand and apology.
With customers under a boil-water notice for at least the next few days, IWSC offered a bit of a helping hand Tuesday evening — two free cases of bottled water.
A drastic loss of water pressure in the corporation’s main supply line on June 21 left many customers in Ira and Dunn without water for three days or more. While pressure is now approaching normal levels, the quality of the water is still below standards, forcing the boil-water notice.
IWSC President Darryl Calley said the current problem is a lack of “residuals” — anti-bacterial and other water-quality agents — in samples taken by the company.
“We have residuals in our main storage tank, but we don’t have them at the end users,” Calley said. “We’ll be flushing the lines over the next couple of days (and) after we get enough residuals in our samples and get the OK from the lab in Sweetwater, we can lift the boil-water notice.”
Calley said officials hope to rescind the notice by this weekend.
IWSC purchased 288 cases of bottled water to hand out to customers to help them through the next few days — an offer that was readily accepted.
Less than 30 minutes into Tuesday’s give-away, two of the eight pallets loaded with water had been emptied and customers were still coming in at a steady pace.
One of those customers, Larry Boulware, said he was without water for the better part of four days.
“The stream coming through the water line wasn’t as big as a straw,” Boulware said. “I had to take a sponge bath, and I haven’t had to do that in years. I can laugh about it now, but it wasn’t very funny at the time.”
Dunn resident Lynn Fuller gets his water from a well, so he was relatively unaffected by the recent pressure loss, but he was helping out his neighbors by picking up and delivering bottled water — he had already taken water to 14 people by 6:30 p.m. and was coming back for more.
Calley said comments he has received from IWSC customers was heartening.
“People have been helping each other out,” he said. “People with water wells have been helping their neighbors by letting them take showers and things like that. So, at least a little bit of good has come from this.”