Hillsborough County Water Resources lifted the precautionary boil water notice that was in place for a large part of south-central Hillsborough County.
On Tuesday, the county said a precautionary boil water notice was in place for a large part of south-central Hillsborough County after a brief power outage earlier that morning.
According to Lisa Rhea, the Director of Water Resources for Hillsborough County Public Utilities, 95,000 water connections were included in the notice boundary, which is pictured in the map below.
The general boundary of the impacted area was all Hillsborough County Utility customers south of SR 60 and east of I-75.
The county said the health department requires a precautionary boil water notice because the pressure in water lines dropped below a certain level.
“You know, it is precautionary, and we are pretty confident that the system is safe — we are not 100% sure," Rhea said. “There is no broken pipe. There is no exposure of the water to the environment. There is no point where we would see bacteria entering the system.”
According to Rhea, a treatment plant in Lithia lost power for several minutes Tuesday morning. Though backup generators fired up as planned, the generator power was not transferred into the system.
Rhea said experts are diagnosing why that did not happen.
“We want to make sure that this does not happen again," she said.
In a short amount of time, power was down, and water pressure fell. Rhea believes the dry weather pattern played a role since more people are currently irrigating their lawns overnight around the time power was lost.
it was estimated to be in place until Wednesday evening since the test takes roughly 18 hours to complete, but it was fixed sooner.
The notice meant people in the area were advised to boil all tap water used for drinking, cooking, making ice, brushing teeth, or washing dishes. A rolling boil of one minute is enough. Cool before using.
To stay apprised of future boil water notices and other alerts, sign up for HCFL Alert, Hillsborough County's official mass notification system.
