Water Emergency Put Belmont To the Test

The town's public notification system proved to be vital on Saturday, May 1, when a boil-water order was issued by the state to Belmont and most of Greater Boston.

The Connect CTY system, which automatically phones land lines in Belmont with a recorded message, was put into effect at about 6:30 p.m. that Saturday, according to Donna Moultrup, director of the town's Health Department.

She said she was notified of the rupture to the MetroWest Water Supply Tunnel in Weston in the early afternoon by the Health and Homeland Alert Network (HHAN). However, at that point, the message was just to stay tuned.

"We began getting organized," she said Wednesday, "so that we were ready to act when the boil-water order came through at 4:45 p.m."

The order, effecting roughly 2.5 million area residents, would last until Tuesday, May 4.

Moultrup said her first move was to call the town's dispatch and get in touch with the town's Emergency Management Agency director, Leo Saidnawey, who began organizing the town's water giveaway on Sunday with the Fire Department and the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency (MEMA). After, she had dispatch notify McLean Hospital while she informed nursing homes of the situation.

Restaurants in town should have received the recorded message from the town's public notification system but were not contacted directly by the Health Department until Sunday afternoon, according to Moultrup.

"We felt that, for the most part, the food had already been prepared in the morning or the night before," she said, "so we didn't do anything with our restaurants that night. Instead, we waited for further guidance from the (Massachusetts) Department of Public Health."

Moultrup said if the ban had gone into effect earlier in the day, she might have had time to notify restaurants in person that day.

Damian de Magistris, owner and general manager of the Italian restaurant il Casale, said he was told of the boil-water order, soon after it happened, by a family member who had seen it on the news. He immediately told his staff to stop serving tap water. He also bought bottled water, began to boil water and disabled the restaurant's ice machine.

"We were able to stay open the entire time," he said Wednesday. "It helped having a backup plan."

de Magistris said business was good that Saturday and Sunday. "It was just as crowded as it normally is," he said.

Moultrup and her assistant director, Stefan Russakow, began going door-to-door to restaurants at noon on Sunday after a Department of Public Health conference call earlier that morning. In addition to not serving tap water, she wanted to make sure employees were using hand sanitizer after washing their hands and gloves whenever possible.

"We were pleasantly surprised with what we saw," she said. "They all seemed quite prepared."

After the ban was lifted by Gov. Deval Patrick on Tuesday morning, Russakow went back to restaurants to make sure they flushed their systems properly.

Moultrup said her department is planning to cover how to better prepare restaurants for similar situations at its annual seminar in June.

Almost every town department contributed during the water emergency, according to Moultrup. She said the town is waiting to hear from the state on reimbursements for overtime pay. Patrick did declare a state of emergency in the 30 communities supplied by the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA).

"I think for the most part Belmont felt good about how it was handled," she said. "We've gotten good feedback from residents."