Pinellas County crews working to restore water on barrier islands

TREASURE ISLAND — Pinellas County Utilities employees are hard at work right now. Pinellas County Utilities Director Jeremy Waugh says a team of more than 100 continue to work to fix the many issues impacting access to water on the islands.

"We have more than 150 crew members here today working on just restoring the water, getting the pressures back up into the main transmission systems, and starting to restore individual businesses and account holders their water service," he said.

As we spoke to Waugh, the team worked just behind him to restore the water to a nearby gas station. Waugh explained the process for that particular repair.

"What you're going to see is a backflow preventer. It looks like a blue U or horseshoe that sits above the ground. Either during the storm or as they were clearing the road debris, this piece of equipment was knocked over, so it was lying flat on the ground. So our crews came and turned off the water so that we weren't just spraying water like you're seeing now. And then, we've created a new backflow preventer that you're going to see them reinstall. And when we're done with this fix, this business will have reestablished water," he said.