Answer this question to see if you should boil your water before using it

Do you pay your water bill to the city of Bradenton?

If the answer is yes, city officials advise you to boil your water before drinking it or using it to wash your hands or brush your teeth.

That’s because of a brief shutdown of the city’s water system Monday evening.

The boil-water notice issued Tuesday morning — about 12 hours after the city initially said you didn’t need to boil your water — applies only to city residents. Customers of Manatee County or other water systems are not covered by the notice.

Economic Development Director Carl Callahan said the after hours emergency number at the water plant was overwhelmed, which is why many customers were cut off Monday evening when the pumps went down due to a brief power loss that didn’t last long enough to kick generators into operation.

“The night number just couldn’t handle the extraordinary number of calls,” Callahan said. “But we are looking into addressing that so it won’t happen again. This was an unusual incident where it affected everyone citywide. It has not happened before.”

Residents who have concerns should check their water bills and if they receive water from Bradenton, they should boil their water through at least Thursday afternoon. Public Works Director Jim McLellan said the first results on water testing is expected later Wednesday and he expects no issues, but the requirement is to initiate a 48-hour notice.

“If there is chlorine in the system, which there is, there won’t be any bacteria,” McLellan said. “Basically the water is good now. We sample our distribution system on a daily basis. We have not had any problems associated with the shutdown. This is not a water quality issue, it’s now required by law to do this additional precautionary testing.”

Residents have expressed frustration over the lack of communication by the city and the confusion initiated Monday night when the city stated that boiling water was not necessary.

“We are still investigating that,” McLellan said. “We want to make sure that none of our written policies were violated and what to do to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”

As for the communication issues, McLellan explained that the city has about 16,000 accounts, of which only about 11,000 have phone numbers. The city does have an automated system to contact those numbers, but, “It takes a couple of hours to get rolling. We did initiate that system and by now most of those accounts have likely been updated with information.”

This story was originally published October 4, 2017 at 8:55 AM with the headline "Answer this question to see if you should boil your water before using it."