The Food Lion grocery store on Garrison Boulevard in Gastonia is one of many that have had their bottled water supplies raided.
[Mike Hensdill/The Gaston Gazette] Containers of water have flown off the shelves at area grocery stores this week due to fear of Hurricane Florence’s approaching menace.
But if you’re on the municipal water system that serves about half of Gaston County’s residents, you’re better off spending your water money on provisions such as food or batteries.
“There probably are folks who are customers of ours who are buying bottled water unnecessarily,” said Joe Albright, public utilities director for the city of Gastonia, who also oversees the entity known as Two Rivers Utilities.
“We serve almost (every city) in the county with the exception of Cherryville and Mount Holly.” A loss of power would compromise Gastonia’s ability to continue sending clean, treated water out to all its customers.
“We have generators on site at all our water treatment plants and major facilities,” said Albright.
“They also double in the summer as peak generators.
The benefit of that is that they operate regularly and they are all well maintained.
But if you get service through Two Rivers, he said access to a clean water supply in the coming days should be the least of your concerns.
“We occasionally will get phone calls from customers asking that question,” he said.