Residents of the Days Point area near Morgarts Beach were without water for roughly a day the last weekend in January due to a failure in the county-owned communal well serving the community.

According to Isle of Wight Assistant County Administrator Don Robertson, the Days Point well screen, which keeps rock fragments from entering the water supply, failed, and a new well is being drilled to replace the original. The new well is tentatively scheduled to come online Feb. 2. Meanwhile, the county is using a third-party contractor to haul water to the Days Point community to maintain the flow of drinking water to homes on the well system.

Days Point is one of three county-owned well systems slated to eventually be capped off and connected to the new 500,000-gallon water tower that serves Hardy Elementary. It was built adjacent to the new school with sufficient capacity to serve Hardy and the surrounding Days Point, Thomas Park and Tormentors Creek neighborhoods using water the county purchases from the town of Smithfield.

According to Robertson, the water tower is presently only serving Hardy.

“Future distribution system improvements are needed to connect Tormentors Creek to the new tank system,” Robertson said. 

Robertson added that a booster station being built off Old Stage Highway must be completed before the Thomas Park community can be switched over to the Hardy tower and Smithfield water supply.