A week into a water outage plaguing tens of thousands of customers in the Asheville service area, city leaders announced at a press conference Dec. 30 that — besides issuing what was described as yet another disappointing update— they no longer will make predictions on when water service will be restored to all customers.

Also, the city will no longer provide estimates on how many customers remain without water service. In the city’s last estimate on the morning of Dec. 28, 38,000 customers were without water. 

However, when pressed on Dec. 30 for an update on that number, the Asheville Citizen Times reported that Mayor Esther Manheimer responded that it was not clear how many were still going without water. 

The smart meter system currently in use requires “literally driving by and picking up that data,” Manheimer told reporters, the ACT noted. “That system will be updated (some time after all the customers are back online), so that it can be checked more easily” in the future.  

What’s more, Manheimer called the situation a “crisis” at the press conference. “We are working as fast as we can... I want to make sure that’s clear, that we understand the urgency of this situation.”

Manheimer said at a second Dec. 30 press conference, as reported by the ACT, “that she has not taken steps to enact a local state of emergency because the city is already under one for North Carolina, which went into effect Dec. 20. The state of emergency was for low temperatures across the state and will last for 30 days.”

Reportedly, the water supply issues started when the basins in the Mills River Intake “froze over” and the plant stopped producing water on Christmas Eve, according to Asheville Water Resources Director David Melton. “The city pointed to cold temperatures over several back-to-back days that led to leaks and usage that they characterized as unusually high,” the ACT noted.

“City leaders said that they had been in touch with the state and the county ‘to make sure any unmet needs would be met,’ if the city found itself short on resources. That has not happened yet, they said.”

We appreciate the efforts of water system workers to restore service as soon as possible to all of the customers — and we think the city was wise to discontinue stating overly optimistic targets for when the water will flow again.