18,000 West Philly residents are urged to boil water before drinking after a pumping station failure

A water-boil advisory was in effect for areas of West Philadelphia on Monday after the failure of a pumping station.

The Philadelphia Water Department said that between 3:45 p.m. and 4:45 p.m. Sunday, a pumping station serving a section of upper West Philadelphia failed. The shutdown caused a loss of pressure in the system, leaving some customers without water. The cause of the malfunction remains unknown.

Water pressure has since been restored, but the city said the lack of pressure could have allowed bacteria and other disease-causing organisms into the water pipes.

Because the loss of pressure lasted about an hour, the state Department of Environmental Protection requires the city to issue a water-boil advisory, said Brian Rademaekers, a spokesperson for the Philadelphia Water Department. He stressed that the risk of illness is low and that the water-boil advisory is “just a precaution.”

Water department officials have not confirmed any water quality impacts from the event.

The boil advisory could last through Tuesday, Rademaekers said. The department has to test water in the area twice, 24 hours apart, to rule out contamination, before it can give an all-clear, he said. The department first tested around 8:30p.m. Sunday, after pressure had been restored, he said, and is waiting on results from that test. It will likely test again Monday night, he said.

Rademaekers said water-boil advisories are uncommon in Philadelphia. “There’s no real precedent for this in Philly — it’s common in different places around the country, but no one in recent memory here has had to do a notification like this,” he said.

The department opted against sending a wireless emergency alert, like the kind that was sent out during the chemical spill on the Delaware River in March, since the affected area is relatively specific compared to the areas that would have been potentially affected by the chemical spill. The water department has instead reached out to residents via text alerts through the Office of Emergency Management, and is communicating with Council members in the area.

“We don’t want to create a panic,” Rademaekers said. “This is such a different situation compared to what happened on the Delaware. It’s really just one pressure district that’s impacted, we know what we’re dealing with, and the overall risk of illness is very low.”

The city says about 18,000 customers are impacted by the water-boil advisory. This includes customers who lost water or had low pressure in:

The water department has posted an interactive map where residents can search their address to see if their home is included in the boil advisory.

Impacted customers are advised to boil water for drinking, cooking, making ice, brushing teeth, washing dishes, and preparing formula. The city suggests:

In the neighborhoods affected by the boil, neighbors said they hadn’t felt many adverse effects from the incident but were remaining cautious about using their water.

Devante Washington, who lives in the 19151 zip code — the entirety of which is under a water boil advisory — said he’d learned about the advisory from an Instagram post Monday morning.”I wish I knew this yesterday — I used some sink water to boil hot dogs,” he said.

His house had lost water pressure early Sunday, but was restored by that evening. He said he planned to avoid using tap water at all until the advisory was lifted.

Down the street, Bobbie Stone Jr. said he hadn’t lost water pressure on Sunday but had later received a phone call and a text message from the city advising him to boil his water before using it. He planned to stick to using bottled water, which he regularly drinks anyway instead of tap.

“I did mess up this morning — I forgot and used tap water to brush my teeth,” he said with a laugh, laughing.

At the daycare where Amina Robinson works, supervisors told staff they couldn’t let the children drink water from the tap without boiling it. But they had a supply of boiled water as well as jugs of tap water they filled and refrigerated last week, she said. ”Everything was smooth,” she said.

Customers with questions can go to water.phila.gov or call 215-685-6300.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated with the correct timing of the water testing.