Independence says power failure at treatment plant prompted precautionary boil advisory; sampling under way

A power failure at the city's Courtney Bend water treatment plant early on Dec. 15 forced the City of Independence to issue a precautionary boil-water advisory and use an emergency interconnect with Kansas City to maintain pressure, interim City Manager Lisa Reynolds said.

Reynolds told the council the outage occurred around 6 a.m. and that preliminary troubleshooting indicated the problem would not be a quick fix. She said crews were preparing to fire a unit that had been down for scheduled maintenance and that a transformer damaged in the incident may be salvageable but would not be repaired immediately.

The city emphasized the advisory is precautionary, not a mandatory boil order. "No contaminants have been found and we don't have a reason to suspect that our system has been breached or contaminated in any way," Reynolds said. She explained that an advisory is used when there has been low pressure and that mandatory boil orders are reserved for confirmed or highly likely contamination.

Officials said restoring power does not immediately lift the advisory. The city will collect about 15 coliform samples from multiple locations and submit them to a laboratory; the advisory will remain in place for 24 hours after samples are collected and return negative results. "As soon as we can pull that sample with power on and our system running, we will do that, get it to the lab immediately, and wait the 24 hours for proof of safety," Reynolds said.

City staff described communication timelines for the outage: media were on-site by about 9 a.m.; the city's public information officer did interviews in the afternoon; social media and website posts began in the morning, and the city focused on directing residents to its website as the single source of truth while staff coordinated with the Department of Natural Resources.

Council members pressed for an after-action review of notification procedures. Reynolds acknowledged limits in the city's current mass-notification capability and said officials would conduct an incident review and explore options to improve systems and policies going forward.

The city said it had restored power to Courtney Bend during the meeting and crews were beginning sampling. If those samples return negative results, the advisory will be lifted 24 hours after sampling is completed.