Staff photo by C.B. Schmelter / Tennessee American Water External Affairs Manager Daphne Kirksey speaks during a press conference at the Hamilton County Emergency Communications Center on Monday, Sept. 16, 2019 in Chattanooga, Tenn.Tennessee American Water Company has released some details of the maintenance that led to what the utility is now calling its largest water outage in “recent history,” after questions from elected officials and pressure from American Water corporate headquarters.
Details about last week’s outage, which left around 35,000 connections without water for as long as three days, are slowly beginning to paint the picture of the leak that occurred during the final phase of a large preventative maintenance project.
After Tennessee American declined to answer a series of questions about the leak, outage and subsequent filing of a class-action lawsuit on Tuesday, most of which were asked by news media during the outage, the Times Free Press redirected the same list of questions to American Water. That resulted in the local office answering most of the questions in an email late Wednesday, after Chattanooga and Hamilton County officials called for similar details during meetings during the week.
Below are the details provided by Tennessee American spokeswoman Daphne Kirksey.
Has the company ever seen a water outage of this magnitude in Chattanooga?