Recap: UD Boils Water On Valentine’s Day

Sean Newhouse
News Editor

This story was originally published on Feb. 16

A water main break caused the city of Dayton to issue a boil advisory on Feb. 13 affecting the University of Dayton for a little more than 24 hours.

On Feb. 13, a water main break under the Great Miami River resulted in a partial water outage that at one point affected 400,000 Montgomery County residents.

Government officials asked residents to conserve water and issued a precautionary boil advisory, meaning they should boil water before consuming.

UD students were alerted with an email that read, “The City of Dayton has issued a boil advisory. All customers are advised to boil any water for consumption for at least 30 seconds.” The email also provided a link to the full alert from the city.

The university provided bottled water to those living in residence halls. Timothy’s Bar & Grill used soda cans and bags of ice for drinks on Feb. 13 due to the advisory.

A change.org petition signed by more than 3,000 individuals asked administration to cancel classes due to the boil advisory. Classes were not canceled.

The water main break was discovered early Feb. 14. By that afternoon, UD and many Brown Street restaurants appeared to be no longer under the advisory, according to a map provided by the city.

However, an email sent to students on Feb. 14 said that “out of an abundance of caution” the university was still urging students to boil water before consuming and would continue providing water to residence halls.

The advisory ended Feb. 15, and UD announced it was safe to drink the tap water. No issues were identified with the water on campus.