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Ogden residents raise concerns over discolored water from home faucets

Posted at 10:01 PM, Aug 23, 2016
and last updated 2016-08-24 08:47:55-04

OGDEN, Utah -- People living in Ogden were afraid to turn on their faucets over the weekend. They say the water coming out was discolored and smelled.

The city has flushed 180 water lines in the past  two days. Over the weekend, they received more than 60 calls from residents concerned about their water.

"The water was weird, brown, yellowish," said resident William Thomas White.

"Just the smell, just like dirty," said resident Michael Hughes.

"It was just really weird because it came out of nowhere," said resident Hailey Richardson

About one-third of Ogden residents were describing the water coming out of their faucets in this way. The main cause is being blamed on last week's Taylor Canyons fire.

"When you fight a fire there is a lot of flow that comes through the lines and so what that does is that increases the velocity and it will pick things up from the pipe, just sediments, iron, things like that," said Public Utilities Manager Kenton Moffett.

The city says the water didn't pose any health risks but residents weren't taking any chances.

"I don't want that in my system, I don't want that on my body," White said.

"I just threw it down the drain and went into the fridge and grabbed a bottle of water," Hughes said.

Richardson was giving her daughter a bath when she realized something was wrong.

"The bottom of the tub, our tub is white, so you could obviously see that it was a yellow-brown kind of color, said Richardson. "It's kind of gross to think, you know, when these types of things go on, what is it that's going in my water supply?"

The city says the water should now be back to normal in most homes. It's an issue they take very seriously.

"We are doing testing just to make sure, just to double check everything, we don't believe there is anything wrong in terms of causing anybody illness or anything like that," Moffett said.

The city says if you continue to have discolored water they are urging you to call them at 801-629-8321.