Snow Days of 2015
John Steinbeck said, “What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.” After the brutal cold of last winter, this summer seems especially sweet. At Fairfax Water, just one look at our maintenance statistics tells a very cold story. Between Feb. 11 and 21 our customer service folks managed a record-breaking number of maintenance issues caused by the snow and ever-changing temperatures. That week we responded to 1,315 calls from customer who had no water – that’s about 119 incidents per day. We responded to 658 calls about possible frozen meters and replaced 439 of those meters. To put this in perspective, during the winter of 2013-2014 we had 852 calls from customers who had no water or had possible frozen meters. In addition to frozen water meters, there were lots of broken water mains this winter. In January and February, Fairfax Water crews repaired 283 water main breaks. That’s almost five main breaks a day! One secret to our efficiency is that all Fairfax Water mobile field workers are equipped with mobile-computing resources, which reduces travel time to and from the office. Our customer service representatives are available from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. and then our emergency dispatchers take over. They work 365 days a year responding to emergency calls.