One Harlan County town without water service

EVARTS, Ky. (WYMT) - Areas of Harlan County are without water Monday evening.

Officials tell WYMT that the Evarts Water Plant is facing a shortage of water, which is affecting several hundred people in the area.

Chief water plant official Woodrow Fields says that the recent lack of rainfall paired with a buildup of small leaks throughout the system as led to the outages.

“We’ve got to get water built up so much, because when we turn the pumps on to go elsewhere, we can go back to square one, so we have to build our tanks up enough to where it won’t hurt,” said Fields.

Fields said that it could be a few days before everyone in the area has water back.

“I imagine this will probably, in all honesty, probably continue on in to Thursday or Friday until people have water everywhere,” he said.

The Yocum and Clover Fork Volunteer Fire Departments have turned into temporary water donation centers. Folks can get water at the Clover Fork Fire Department on Tuesday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.

“They had contacted us that there was a water issue and they asked if we would be able to distribute water, and I told them absolutely,” said Clover Fork FD Chaplin Carl Canterbury. “They sent the water and they come up and we been working ever since.”

Both Black Mountain and North Evarts Elementary Schools are affected by the outage, but Fields expects them to stay open.

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