Central New York water customers can now sign up to receive instant notifications for water emergencies or routine information through a new alert system. The Onondaga County Water Authority, or OCWA, regularly posts messages on its website. But Executive Director Jeff Brown says people might not check.
“Right now, we don't have a really efficient method to get that information out where we're playing reactive mode," Brown said. "This is being a little more proactive. We make sure that we are targeting just the areas that are impacted, so only those customers are going to get the alert.”
For example, as of Wednesday afternoon, there were at least six alerts on the OCWA.org website. But under the alert system, only customers in those neighborhoods would get notified. Brown hopes all customers sign up so they have the most up-to-date and accurate contact information. He says notifications will start with planned outages.
“Hey, we know we're going to an area we're going to change a valve out," Brown said. "A hydrant is not working. We need to change the hydrant out, so water is going to be impacted to that area. If we are taking an old section of water main and replacing it where water's going to be out for a period of time, or there may be cloudy water.”
In that case, Brown says customers would be told to run their water until it clears up. In the end, he says the alerts should reduce calls from concerned customers in their service territory, which serves a half million residents in Onondaga, Oswego, Madison, Cayuga, and Oneida Counties. The city of Syracuse has its own water system.
