The Orange Water and Sewer Authority will address the recent Chapel Hill water shortage at its Board of Directors meeting at six o’clock Thursday night.

The meeting will take place at Chapel Hill Town Hall instead of its usual location in Carrboro.

OWASA executive director Ed Kerwin said this change in location would ensure the people of Chapel Hill have the chance to easily raise questions about what happened.

“It’s so important that we’re fully transparent and forthcoming with this information,” he said.

To aid with that goal, OWASA released a timeline of events Wednesday regarding the water shortage.

The timeline breaks down each action taken by OWASA and the Orange County Health Department from 3:00 p.m. on February 2 until 9:00 p.m. on February 4.

Those actions began with OWASA’s discovery of the fluoride overfeed at its Jones Ferry water treatment plant. OWASA closed the plant in response.

Two hours later, OWASA began receiving portions of Durham’s water supply to sustain its own reserves.

That problem was compounded just after 10:00 a.m. the following morning when a water main broke in northeast Chapel Hill.

This severely affected OWASA’s already depleted water supply, forcing it to release a “Do Not Use” warning to its customers about an hour later in order to guard against contamination and protect its emergency water reserves.

Throughout the rest of the day, OWASA continued to receive large supplies of water from Durham, while also activating connection lines with Chatham County.

Kerwin said OWASA received an estimated 12 million gallons of water from the city of Durham and more than 400,000 gallons from Chatham County.

“There’s a long list of people to thank,” he said. “We’re so grateful for our partners.”

Repair work began on the break immediately after OWASA released the warning and concluded the next morning, February 4, at 10:30.

OWASA removed the “Do Not Use” order later that afternoon.

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