Massachusetts

Onset Officials to Hand Out Water at Fire Station

Steven Baptiste owns the Pier View restaurant in the Onset section of Wareham. On a normal Saturday he said the 80 seats in his restaurant are normally filled.

On this particular Saturday, a boil water advisory is putting a dent in his business.

“Well my water temperature is 180 degrees as far as the dishwashing,” he said. “We have bottled water that we are using in lieu of the water from the tap.”

The restaurant staff are also using store-bought packages of ice because they can’t make their own and risk giving customers contaminated ice cubes.

The fire department is giving out bottled water to residents who need it from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m. Satuday.

"It’s been best frustrating because we planned a big dinner today so we’ve got to wash out the food in bottled water,” said Onset resident, Dawn Prunier.

Some residents noticed discolored water a few weeks ago.

Onset Water Department officials took water samples Wednesday as part of their monthly water test and one of those samples tested positive for E. coli.

Onset Water Department Superintendent Kevin Sampson said a repeat test did not find E. Coli but did test positive for other bacteria.

“(We) talked with the state, they decided to put us under a boil order because there were too many variables,” Sampson said.

“My dog is sick,” said resident Melissa Proctor. “It’s been since Tuesday and we found out this morning.”

Baptiste is hoping officials fix the problem soon.

“A gentleman came in this morning,” Baptiste said. “He had a text from the water department saying it could be a week.”

Officials say boiled water should be used for

-drinking

-making ice

-brushing teeth

-washing dishes

-food preparation

Managers at the Stonebridge Bar & Grill said they’re having to haul in bottled water and about 200 pounds of ice a day, which is not good for business.

“Kind of crazy," Jenn Daly said. "Especially the way we kind of heard about it we kind of heard about it through the grapevine. My neighbor said something and then I sought on Facebook so that list, that was a strange part of the whole thing.”

Water department officials say they’ll be flushing out the water system and conducting testing on Monday and Tuesday. They said that they hope all of this will be resolved by next week.

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