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“I am not second-guessing the thing, it’s just that each situation is unique and the folks making the decision have to really understand the impact,” she said. But OWASA’s executive director, Ed Kerwin, said February’s call was made by local officials, and was the right one. OWASA’s biggest problem on Feb. 3 was that it was running out of water, not that low network pressures would’ve sparked disease, he said. “Had we had a huge fire like the city of Raleigh recently experienced, we would’ve been at real risk of running completely out,” Kerwin said. “Had that happened, the community would’ve been affected for days and days, not just 24 hours.” Kerwin was alluding to the re-start problems that ensue if a water network runs dry. Engineers have to run a lengthy series of contamination tests before putting mains back in service. The OWASA boss was adamant that while local officials kept regulators informed, “the state was not involved” in decision to issue the alerts. “The state did not say, ‘You better issue a do-not-use/do-not-drink,’” Kerwin said. “That was a decision made here locally.” He added that DEQ regulators did have some advice for OWASA about the “remediation” of the flouride issue at the water plant. But about the alerts, there “was no state advice or guidance.” Stacy Shelp, a spokeswoman for the Orange County Health Department, said it “was a local decision,” made by Kerwin and UNC-trained former county Health Director Colleen Bridger. An investigation by outside engineers found that after the Feb. 3 water main break, water levels in the tanks that serve the UNC campus and the southern two-thirds of Chapel Hill “all dropped below minimum [levels] to maintain fire protection,” a fact giving weight to Kerwin’s concerns. Water pressures — the bigger factor in disease worries, as opposed to supply ones — dropped briefly in much of the system, but it’s “unlikely that the entire, or even majority of the [zone] experienced unsafe” conditions, the engineers report said. More: http://www.heraldsun.com/news/local/counties/orange- county/article141555659.html#storylink=cpy