Water emergency no longer in effect in Asbury Park
Power restored to wastewater treatment plant
A water emergency announced this morning is no longer in effect in Asbury Park, city manager Terence Reidy said moments ago.
“The sewer plant is back up and running and we have power there,” Reidy said.
Residents were urged not to use the city’s water for any purpose, although the water’s condition was safe, said Garrett Giberson, spokesperson for the Office of Emergency Management [OEM] in the city. This was to decrease overflow and backups at the Ocean Avenue waste water treatment plant, which processes water that comes from flushing and drains, Reidy said.
The issue arose at around 3 a.m. when the plant’s generator malfunctioned, Reidy said. City officials learned of the issue at their 9 a.m. OEM meeting this morning, Reidy said.
“We didn’t have any backups and we didn’t have any extraordinary measures,” Reidy said. “We got the generator back online and then very shortly after that, we were able to get direct power to the sewer plant … We made it through seven days on the emergency generator but now we’re back on the grid.”
City officials directed Jersey Central Power & Light [JCP&L] to work on the waste water treatment plant when they learned of the outage, and power was restored to the plant just before noon today, Reidy said.
“The important thing is there was no backup into homes or streets,” Reidy said. “We put out the word because at that time, we were concerned because the less water that goes in to the plant, the longer we can hold our own down there. We put the word out so people would be cautious about flushing or taking showers because they were a little chilly. But we’re fine and everything is good now.”
The Asbury Towers, located just north of the plant, is also now back on the grid along with the plant, so the residents who evacuated that building can now return home, Reidy said. Most of the complex’s 300 residents are senior citizens.
Of the city’s JCP&L customers, about 3,202 are still without power, according to FirstEnergy. The highest reported amount of outages over the course of the storm was over 5,000.
