Repairs continued Friday morning on Provincetown’s broken sewer system, as work crews raced to restore infrastructure before crowds descended on the Cape Cod tip community for a week full of LGBT celebrations.
Workers worked overnight Thursday to repair the sewer system after the city declared a “sewer emergency” earlier in the day. Restaurants in the bustling downtown corridor were forced to close and residents were asked to flush their toilets only “when absolutely necessary,” an advisory from city leaders said.
Portions of the vacuum-affected sewer system were back up and running by Friday morning and the project was “moving in the right direction,” said an update from City Manager Alex Morse. But more work was needed and the sewer emergency remained in effect.
For P-Town, the sewage problems came at a particularly inopportune time.
The Provincetown Carnival kicks off Saturday, bringing a weeklong celebration of LGBT life to a community-loving city.
The summer festival, not held since 2019, could draw as many as 150,000 people, the Boston Globe reported.
The areas in brown are where properties are advised to limit their water use. Properties in the green zone are on the city’s gravity system, so they are not affected by the sewer emergency.Provincetown
The shutdown stemmed from electrical problems, caused by storms in the area, that shut down the central vacuum station that runs the downtown sewer system, Morse said Tuesday.
Throughout the week, the city asked residents to limit toilet flushing and forgo laundry to give workers a chance to fix the sewage problems.
When water use did not drop enough, the city imposed a sewer emergency, immediately closing restaurants in the affected area and informing residents that they must significantly reduce water use.
“This is necessary to prevent a further public health emergency caused by sewer overflows and we must drastically reduce the flow to allow critical repair work to be carried out in order to return the city to full capacity,” he wrote Morse on Facebook on Thursday.
Morse said Thursday morning that the city estimated it would take 48 hours to complete the sewer work, meaning the sewer system would be operational before the Carnival festivities.
In an update Thursday night, as the first day of the sewer emergency came to a close, Morse said the affected sewer system saw a 48% drop in water flow compared to the day before.
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