by Geoff Fox
A public water main break at 57 East Main Street on Tuesday, November 4, led the town to issue a boil advisory for the entire town. The advisory lasted until around 2 p.m. last Thursday afternoon, November 6.
Town Manager Mike Faith said an eight-inch water main broke last Tuesday afternoon with so much water it looked like a geyser.
“The water pressure just pushed the road up and pushed the sidewalk up right in that area,” Faith said.
The damage to the road and sidewalk were to be repaired Tuesday, November 11.
The cause of the break was about an eight-foot section of pipe that went bad.
“The funny thing is, it wasn’t even that old of a pipe,” Faith said, describing it as a PVC pipe that for unknown reasons went bad.
Faith said one way to keep bacteria out of a town’s water supply is by adding chlorine to the supply, but also keeping the water under pressure and flowing.
“That’s why you try to avoid having dead ends,” he said. “You want to water go in a loop as opposed to going out to a dead end.”
When the main broke last week, the town lost 25,000 gallons at the well house and possibly a foot and a half of water at the water tank on Blue Hill.
When losing that much water, the water pressure to the citizens goes down.
Faith said there were reports of loss of water and little water pressure all over town. He admitted some people lost water due to crews shutting off a valve so they could work on the main.
Once the pressure drops, the water boil advisory has to be issued.
“It’s an advisory. We can’t tell you not to drink the water, we can just tell that we recommend you boil it if you’re going to consume it,” Faith said. 
Repairs to the water main were completed around 11 p.m. the night of the break and the Maryland Department of the Environment was contacted first thing the next morning.
Faith said the system was flushed until the water ran clear after the repairs were made the night of the break.
That’s when the boil water advisory was implemented.
Faith said the Washington County Board of Education was contacted, as were restaurants and places that served food.
Places serving food and beverages had notifications about the boil water advisory and couldn’t serve those items.
Samples of the water were collected and Washington County was able to run the tests for the town. Normally the tests are sent to Altoona, but Washington County was able to get the tests done.
Testing usually takes 24 hours to conduct.
The town has had water line breaks along streets in town that haven’t required the advisories to be sent out, but because it’s main, amount of water, and the pressure being lost, then the advisory will be issued.
“If you’re working on a lateral line somewhere or a smaller line and you’re shutting off four or five houses, that’s totally different,” Faith said.
Chlorine tests were done at various sites around town and was showing up, which Faith said by showing up, the chlorine was doing its job.
Faith said he didn’t stop drinking the water and if someone drank from a water hose as a kid, they’d be ok as it’s a bigger risk than what the town was looking at.
In a notice posted Thursday afternoon on the town’s social media page, Washington County Department of Water Quality confirmed recent water samples had returned absent for Total Coliform and E. Coli, which indicated the water was safe for consumption.
After the confirmation and reviewing the results, the MDE authorized the lifting of the boil water advisory.
“I know people get concerned and they get upset, and I agree, its difficult to get that information out to everybody, not everyone is on social media,” Faith said.
The town itself doesn’t have the means to get the notifications out to everyone, as it would be difficult to call everyone in town.
Faith said the town has partnered with Washington County to use their system to alert the residents.
With that system, the county would draw a circle around Hancock and send out a notification to those in that area via text, call, or email.
You do have to sign up for those notifications and the link is on the town’s social media page.
In setting up the profile, people can let officials know if there are people with health issues at the location and decide what alerts for they’d want to receive.
Faith encouraged people to sign up for the alerts and had pushed the removal of the boil water advisory through that as well as posting on the town’s social media.
Faith said he wanted to get people signed up for the program so the town has a way to get in touch with people should something happen.
“We just really don’t have any kind of system set up in the Town of Hancock to notify people quickly when things happen,” he said.
