Niles Shuts Off Water to Businesses for Failure to do Tests

The city’s water superintendent briefly shut down water service to five prominent businesses last week and warned that more could face the same fate for failing to test their backflow devices.

Backflow is the unintentional reversal of flow in a potable water system that could contaminate drinking water.

Neighborhoods Left in the Dark, Parks Suffer

Before dawn on Monday, Scot Smelker’s phone rang.

Water, the caller said, was spouting like geysers -- hundreds of gallons a second into the sky -- from an irrigation system Smelker’s All American Landscape Co. maintains in Stetson Hills.  Thieves had broken through steel cages and stolen seven expensive copper valves...

School District Sues Over Flooded Building

Five years after a new addition was built to one of its schools, the Pontiac-William Holliday School District claims it sustained major damages when an excessive amount of discharge water flooded the recently constructed school structure.  [...]

The school district claims a backflow preventer valve malfunctioned during the night of May 26, 2009, causing an excessive amount of water to be discharged directly into the new domed school addition.

Police: Do Not Drink Water in Somerset

SOMERSET, Mass., (WPRI) - Police are advising people not to drink the water in Somerset.

Authorities issued the order after there was a cross connection when a hydroseeding company connected to a fire hydrant.