ZANESVILLE, Ohio — If you live or work on Maple Avenue in Zanesville, fill the bathtub and the water bottles before 11 o’clock tonight. The City of Zanesville Water Division will shut down water service on Maple Avenue from 11 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 1, to 7 a.m. Monday, Nov. 2, to install a valve, according to the city’s public notice. The shutoff covers all homes and businesses on Maple Avenue and all side streets between Military Road and Northpointe Drive.
When the water comes back on Monday morning, a precautionary boil advisory will be in effect for everyone in the affected area, the city notice says. Until the city lifts it, residents should boil tap water for at least one minute before using it for drinking, cooking, brushing teeth, or making ice, according to the notice.
This is a planned outage, not a break — and that distinction matters for how the night should go. A main break is an emergency that finds you; a valve installation is maintenance the city schedules in the overnight hours, when demand is lowest and the fewest showers, dishwashers, and business kitchens are running. The 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. window is chosen so that most of the neighborhood sleeps through the interruption itself and wakes up to the advisory, not the shutoff.
The boil advisory that follows is precautionary, a word the city uses deliberately. Whenever water pressure drops across a stretch of main, there is a chance — not a certainty — that contaminants can enter the line. Boiling is the cheap, certain answer while the city tests the water, and the city notice says a follow-up notice will go out when testing shows it is safe to stop boiling.
The timeline for the neighborhood is now set in the city notice. The notice was in residents’ hands ahead of the weekend; the shutoff begins at 11 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 1; crews work through the night on the valve; water service is restored at 7 a.m. Monday, Nov. 2; and from that moment the boil advisory, not the shutoff, is the thing to plan around, until the city’s follow-up notice clears the water. Side streets off Maple Avenue between Military Road and Northpointe Drive are inside the affected area even if a household’s mailing address is not Maple Avenue itself, according to the notice — if your street feeds off that stretch, treat the notice as addressed to you.
For households in the affected blocks, the practical checklist for Sunday evening is short. Draw enough drinking and cooking water for Monday morning before 11 p.m. Fill a tub if you want flush water overnight. If you forget and wake up dry, bottled water covers drinking and brushing until service returns at 7 a.m. — after which the tap is fine for bathing, laundry, and dishes, with boiling reserved for anything that goes in your mouth.
Businesses along the Maple Avenue corridor have their own version of the same list: ice machines, coffee brewers, and any food preparation that uses tap water all sit under the advisory Monday morning until it lifts. The city lists the Zanesville Water Division at (740) 455-0631 for questions, according to the notice.
What we know — and what we’re still waiting on
What we know: the shutoff runs 11 p.m. Nov. 1 to 7 a.m. Nov. 2; it covers Maple Avenue and its side streets between Military Road and Northpointe Drive; the work is a valve installation; and a precautionary boil advisory follows restoration, per the City of Zanesville Water Division notice. What we’re still waiting on: the city has not said exactly when test results will clear the advisory, only that a follow-up notice will announce it — so Monday’s announcement, not the clock, is what ends the boiling.
Water and street work is a running story across the region this month. In Ross County, Chillicothe sets fall leaf collection by trash route starting the week of Nov. 2, and the city will cut the ribbon on its rebuilt park on Nov. 6 in the transformed Yoctangee Park — the unglamorous, essential calendar of Ohio city services doing their rounds before winter.
What happens next: crews install the valve overnight, service returns by 7 a.m. Monday, and Maple Avenue households boil water until the city’s follow-up notice lifts the advisory. Anyone in the affected area who loses service well past 7 a.m., or who never gets the all-clear, should call the Water Division at (740) 455-0631 rather than guessing.
Photo: David Brossard, CC BY-SA