Letter from Spartanburg Water CEO, Guy Boyle

I sincerely hope that this letter finds you safe after Hurricane Helene passed through our community on September 27. Since the pre-dawn hours of September 27, our employees have been focused squarely on ensuring that our infrastructure remained viable and that water and wastewater services were uninterrupted, even in light of a complete loss of electrical power for almost a week to our system.

Our staff has been working around the clock to ensure that Spartanburg Water remained in a position to deliver on our core mission: providing safe, high quality water in a reliable manner to all of our customers. This included being in a position to aid other water districts if we were asked for assistance. Keeping over 2,000 miles of infrastructure, treatment plants, reservoirs, hundreds of remote stations and tanks operational for nearly a week, without utility power and with damage caused by uprooted trees, has been a monumental task, but our team members have been able to rise to the occasion and do just that and remain safe. Safety of our employees, who have been working in a dangerous environment for nearly a week, has been and will remain a top priority.

I am incredibly honored to be working alongside so many consummate professionals. I am so proud of the 300 Spartanburg Water employees who have led and who have ensured that our community had the most critical of resources necessary to weather the days that followed the storm - available, clean, safe drinking water. Our goal, from the onset, was to eliminate the worries of not having access to drinking water and | believe that our team has delivered on that goal. I am happy to report that at no time during this natural disaster have we ever stopped providing quality, reliable drinking water or providing reliable wastewater services. There has been no loss of service to our customers and there have not been any boil water notifications from Spartanburg Water.

I sympathize with many of you on the damages sustained to your properties from the wind, fallen trees and rising water levels but I hope that everyone remained safe through it all. We will remain in a recovery phase for at least the next few weeks. This includes checking on systems and repairing damage and working with our customers who may have challenges stemming from the storm.

Parks

We have reopened Lake Bowen Park to the public as of Friday October 4!" at 8:00AM. Lake Blalock Park will remain closed indefinitely until we have time and resources to address all the safety concerns within the park. Lake Blalock permit holders will be honored at Lake Bowen until such time that Lake Blalock Park is able to safely reopen.

Ice Houses

Most of our ice houses are operational and dispensing ice. For the time being, water will be available at the ice houses free of charge. Ice house locations can be found on our main web site at Spartanburgwater.org under “ice houses”.

Non-Pay Disconnect

Non-Pay disconnects have been suspended through Friday October 11.

Emergency

If you have an emergency or a billing question, please call our Customer Experience number at 864-582-6375 during normal business hours (Monday - Friday, 8 a.m. - 5:30 p.m). For evenings and weekends, please call our After Hours/Emergency number at 864-585-8296.

Our community is incredibly resilient and while there are challenges right now to overcome, Spartanburg County will work through it all together.

Sincerely,
Guy Boyle
Chief Executive Officer

Download Letter