COVID-19 Notice

Dear Valued Eastside Utility District Customers:

Eastside Utility District understands the necessity of a safe and clean water supply to the everyday lives of our 60,000-plus customers as well as its added importance during the pandemic outbreak of the COVID-19 virus.

Eastside Utility is taking this issue very seriously and in an effort to protect public health and to ensure safe, clean water continues to flow to our customers’ taps, we are updating all relevant measures to ensure we have staff and resources to meet our customers’ clean water needs.

Some of the steps being implemented include:

• Closing our main office to the public. However, our drive-thru window will remain open during normal business hours.
• Educating and emphasizing the recommended practices from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) to our employees and providing them with gloves as well as plenty of hand sanitizer to help incorporate those practices.
• Encouraging our employees to engage in the recommended social distancing practices and are only asking those employees essential to our daily operations to work.
• Reaching out to our neighboring utilities to coordinate combined resources if necessary, to minimize any risk of interruption to water services through either line breaks or employee quarantine.
• Checking with our vital chemical suppliers to see if any deliveries may be impacted. In the same vein, we are also implementing measures to keep all out vital water treatment chemicals essential to treating water at 50% or above capacity in bulk storage tanks.
• Putting measures in place to ensure the continuity of operations in the event an employee or employees become affected and must quarantine. Our water filtration plant is staffed on a 24-hour basis, and those employees are taking extra precautions to self-isolate in order to remain vigilant and on the job.

Eastside Utility will reassess these policies on a weekly basis and will notify customers as additional changes are made.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recommends Americans to continue to use and drink tap water as usual. The World Health Organization (WHO) has stated that the “presence of the COVID-19 virus has not been detected in drinking water supplies.” Eastside Utility incorporates a conventional water treatment process which includes chlorine gas and granular activated carbon filtration which removes and kills pathogens, including viruses.

Sincerely,

Eastside Utility District Management