Page 8 - AL811

Water Emergency Lea
Small Alabama town joins AL811 after experiencing damage first-hand
By Michael Downes
811 Magazines
By Michael Downes
811 Magazines
Leaders in Newton, a small town northwest of Dothan, were unaware that the town’s water infrastructure wasn’t already utilizing the notification services of the 811 system. But after a serious water main break, the town has joined Alabama 811, and encourage other municipalities to consider the same.
Paul Jones is relatively new to the Newton Water Board, having been voted in as chairman only two years ago. But his roots in the town go back well more than 60 years. Coincidentally, that’s about the same age as much of the water infrastructure in the town
of about 1600. He was asked by city officials to join the water board to help restructure the organization. It was during that time when a local electric utility struck one of the town’s six-inch water mains while replacing overhead infrastructure.
He was surprised the utility company that damaged the water main said the
It didn’t click for Paul that the town needed to join AL811 until they experienced the outage.
town would be responsible for the repairs.
“I called the local electric company that
drilled into the line and told them they should be responsible for the damage,” Paul said. “But they said they called
811 before the work and nobody said anything about the water line, and that the damage was our responsibility. And it was also our responsibility to join 811. I can’t speak for the administration before me, but I don’t know why we weren’t a member.”
The town didn’t have an internal
crew that was able to fix the damage,
so a contractor pulled workers off another job 30 miles away to make the emergency repairs. That bill hasn’t come in as of the time of writing, but Paul estimates it will be about $3000. That may not sound like a lot, but to a town with only 800 water customers and 65 sewer customers, every bit adds up.
Fortunately, the damage occurred on an outlying leg of the system and not in the middle of town, so only 30-40 customers were affected by the outage that lasted
6 • Alabama 811 2024, Issue 2
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