Town Says Tech Error Held Up Water Alert

The Dix Hills Water District attempted to conduct a phone blast to notify residents when two samples tested positive for last week, but an error in the system halted the action, a Town of Huntington spokesperson said on Tuesday.

A.J. Carter, public information officer for the town, said that officials originally tried to call residents as soon as the contamination was identified using the Huntington Alert system, an emergency notification which residents can sign up for on the town's website. Carter said that the town was initially going to utilize the alert, but since there was no way of sending the notification to only residents in the Dix Hills Water District, it was decided to target affected residents with flyers and use of news media outlets instead.

"We had hoped to use Huntington Alert, the town's 911 call system, but technical issues arose with our vendor. We certainly hope to have those issues taken care of for the next time," he said.

Water District employees began printing and hand-delivering flyers Friday night, and the Town posted the alert on its website and Facebook page.

"We tried to make sure in every way possible that residents knew about the issue," he said.

Still, many concerned residents that they never received any notification, calling the lack of communication "shameful."

"They definitely dropped the ball on this," Stephanie Jose posted.

"I think they handled the communication very poorly. For those who subscribe to Facebook it worked great- but for those who do not- they did not find out about it until two days later. I had a flyer in my mailbox but others that are not in my neighborhood did not," Debbie Kohlhepp commented on Facebook. "Could they not have sent out a town wide phone message to alert people? Seems like the town is way behind and needs to step it up a bit."

Subsequent testing has shown no further signs of water contamination. The Dix Hills Water District is the source of positive coliform bacteria test results.