Marbury Water board fields customer questions amid conservation notice

Marbury Water officials spent more than three hours Monday answering customer questions in Marbury, with about 16 people attending in person and others following the meeting on Facebook Live. The discussion centered on water restrictions, the system’s finances, a petition seeking leadership changes and plans to expand the community’s water supply, and the utility brought in engineers, auditors and its attorney to help field the public’s concerns.

The meeting came after Marbury Water System issued an emergency water conservation notice in May 2026, telling customers that its main water supplier had notified the utility of much-needed maintenance on one of its larger water storage tanks. The notice said the work could continue through the beginning of October 2026 if it did not move faster than expected. Marbury Water said the conservation plan was required by the Alabama Department of Environmental Management and the Environmental Protection Agency.

The strain has touched roughly 3,000 people across multiple counties who get their water from the Marbury Water System, including customers in Pine Level and surrounding areas. Water restrictions began there amid the tank maintenance, adding urgency to questions about how long residents would have to manage under conservation limits and how the system would keep serving homes and small businesses without further disruption.

The utility’s earlier explanation also pointed to a separate service problem when an office manager said the facility lost two water pumps during a Tuesday evening storm, leaving only one pump serving 3,000 homes. That left customers facing a system under pressure from both supply maintenance and equipment failures, with the board’s long question-and-answer session showing how closely residents are watching the utility’s response.