Long Beach residents experience water pressure issues amid fire dangers concerns across LI

News 12's Thema Ponton is in Long Beach to find out what's behind the water pressure problem and when it might be fixed.

Thema Ponton

Nov 21, 2024, 3:16 AM

Updated 34 days ago

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Long Beach residents say they are dealing with low water pressure, right in the middle of fire danger concerns across Long Island - and just ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday.
"I didn't have a full force in any of my bathrooms, everything seems like slow and sluggish." said Kal Lanzo, of Long Beach.
Long Beach city manager Daniel Creighton told News 12 "Yesterday afternoon, we were doing a test on our project that's over on the North Shore, during that test we were able to isolate a valve, the valve, when we went to reopen it, the stem broke off, lost all water pressure. We immediately went to our neighbors in Lido Beach, in Atlantic Beach, we opened up water connections with them, to provide full service back to our residents. Unfortunately, we did see a drop in pressure for approximately a half an hour. We were able to resume that full water pressure, a little bit less than what you usually see, instead of 60 pounds of pressure, we have 50 pounds of pressure. Fully restored it and we're working right now to make sure we get the new valve put in...we do expect this to continue until about Wednesday."
Creighton also said while the water pressure may be low right now, it's not a safety issue.
"We still have enough water pressure to put out any fires...we'll still have fifty pounds of pressure which is significant enough to put out any fire in the area, if for some reason there's a fire on the top floor of one of the buildings, we need to boost pressure, we still have the capability to do that as well." said Creighton.
Lanzo tells News 12 she hopes the water pressure is fully restored before Thanksgiving.
"Next week is Thanksgiving, things better be up and running by then." said Lanzo.