MLGW lifts precautionary boil water advisory
Storm damage along Seed Tick Road in Lakeland following the Sunday evening storms on June 25, 2023. (Courtesy Wesley Alan Wright)
Memphis Light, Gas and Water lifted the precautionary boil water advisory in place for parts of the county just before noon Wednesday, June 28.
The utility announced the boil water advisory as a regulatory precaution after a weekend storm — the sixth worst in MLGW history, just ahead of Hurricane Katrina — knocked out power to pumping stations and impacted water pressure.
Outages from a Sunday evening storm with wind speeds upwards of 80 miles per hour knocked power out for about a quarter of MLGW’s customers. By Wednesday at noon, crews had restored power to about three-quarters of affected customers.
MLGW President and CEO Doug McGowen said the roughly 30,000 customers still without power Wednesday could be without power for days, as triple-digit temperatures sweep the region.
Most remaining outages are concentrated in Shelby Forest, Bartlett, Raleigh and Millington.
The utility has 100 crews working around the clock. McGowen said they’ve tackled the biggest outages that affected the biggest swaths of customers. Now, crews are targeting the more complicated outages, which McGowen likened to hand-to-hand combat.
“That work will continue until we have every customer restored,” McGowen said.
Topics
MLGWKeely Brewer
Keely Brewer is a Report for America corps member covering environmental impacts on communities of color in Memphis. She is working in partnership with the Ag & Water Desk, a sustainable reporting network aimed at telling water and agriculture stories across the Mississippi River Basin.
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