Outdoor watering restricted in this Summit County town due to overuse, pump failure

FRANCIS, Summit County — The town of Francis, in Summit County, is asking its residents to stop all outdoor watering while its water levels recover following a pump failure.

"This is obviously frustrating for everybody, but we need to just continue to be responsible moving forward and use the best practices with our water," said City Councilman Clint Summers.

In a press release from the city from July 13, city officials said the water tanks were "critically low due to high usage." That was the first time city leaders asked residents to cut back on water use.

"Let's give these tanks some time for the pumps to fill them, and it was working a little bit," Summer said. "I don't think a lot of people were being too strict with their water usage."

He said the city doesn't have a supply issue; it's the high demand that impacted them. He said a pump failure Sunday night made the situation more dire.

"Typically, it goes off at night when the storage gets full, and it didn't turn back on," Summers said. "What I heard was that there was a hole in the motor."

The motor was sent back to the company it was purchased from. Summers said they're running tests to diagnose the issue. By Tuesday morning, crews got that broken pump running.

"Now we've got two operational pumps," Summers said. "We have a backup option that, if we see it start to occur again, we can throw a third pump in there."

He said it's important residents continue conservatively using their water while the reservoirs fill up and the heat wave lasts.

"We would just ask that for the next couple days, while they are going to satisfactory levels, we just hold back on our outdoor watering," Summers said.

The city will have a new permanent water well and reservoir to depend on later this year.

"It's a larger one, it's going to supplement all the growth. It's a 750,000 gallon," Summers said.

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