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Resident tells Highlands council an unannounced March 22 water outage left town without water for about 11 hours
Summary
A condo resident told the Highlands Mayor and Council that a March 22 overnight water outage beginning about 8:15 p.m. left much of Highlands, Sebrite and parts of Middletown without water for roughly 11 hours with little or no advance notice; the resident said the water company failed to provide bottled water or prior notice and that officials had been alerted.
HIGHLANDS, N.J. — At the Borough of Highlands Mayor and Council meeting on April 2, a condominium resident described an unannounced overnight water outage on March 22 that the speaker said began about 8:15 p.m. and lasted roughly 11 hours, leaving residents without running water for drinking or flushing.
"At 8:17... 11 hours... you couldn't even flush your toilet for 11 hours," the resident told the council, saying the outage affected the entire borough of Highlands, the borough of Sebrite and portions of Middletown, and that most households received no advance notice. The speaker said the water company did not deliver bottled water and criticized the company’s notification practices.
The resident said they had raised the matter with the water company, county commissioners and state representatives and that they planned to escalate the complaint; "we've spoken with... the water company about how this can never happen again with no notice," the resident said.
Council members did not report a policy decision on the record at the public meeting to require advance water-notice protocols; the public portion closed after the complaint, and the meeting moved to an advertised executive session on litigation. The transcript indicates follow-up contact with the utility has occurred, but no binding remedial action or timeline was described in open session.
The meeting transcript records public frustration with the outage and the absence of timely notification. Residents seeking remedies or assurances about emergency notification and bottled-water provisioning may pursue follow-up with borough administration and the local water utility.
Attributions in this article are to the resident who spoke during public comment and to statements recorded in the April 2 meeting transcript.
