NEWTOWN, Conn. — The Connecticut communities hit hardest by flooding are not only dealing with damage but also water restrictions.
The towns of Bethel, Oxford, Beacon Falls, Seymour and Newtown are being asked to conserve.
The root of the problem are damaged wellfields in Oxford and Newtown. The issue presents an irony. A water supply damaged by water.
“Newtown, the area where our wellfields are located, is actually still flooded,” said Peter Fazekas of the Aquarion Water Company.
A train trestle in Newtown leading to the wellfields collapsed, leaving the tracks suspended while the retaining wall crumbled.
“It’s kind of created a dam and it’s preventing that water from receding,” said Fazekas.
The infrastructure of the wellfields was damaged including pumps and wiring.
“Literally, we had to go in by boat to our facility,” added Fazekas.
Aquarion is now asking residents in Bethel, Oxford, Beacon Falls, Seymour and Newtown to conserve.
“Usually, at this time of the year, I power wash my house. I have a vinyl sided house. I’ll wait on that,” said Bethel resident Victoria Bortolot.
Residents should avoid car or power washing, gardening, lawn watering and pool filling.
“We're not going to water anything,” remarked Doug Muckell, also of Bethel. “We don’t wash our cars. Our pool is overfilled, so I don’t know if we are really going to use much water anyway.”
Some people said they have concerns about water quality not quantity.
“Yeah, what concerns me is the quality of the water. If a lot of debris was in there you don’t know what the wash off is,” remarked Bortolot.
Aquarion said quality remains high and that the problem is isolated to equipment failure. They shut down their well-fields before the storm to prevent stormwater from contaminating the drinking wells and have instead rerouted customer water from reservoirs.
“We have redundant water supplies so customers are receiving water from our main water system,” said Fazekas.
Aquarion says that in addition to their well fields in Newtown, wells in Oxford were also damaged. They are in the process of being repaired. All of these issues are affecting about 24,000 customers total.
RELATED: Seymour small business owners face an uncertain future following heavy flooding at Klarides Village
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Matt Caron is a reporter at FOX61 News. He can be reached at mcaron@fox61.com. Follow him on Facebook, X and Instagram.
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