Midway Water customers call for uniform alerts after boil notice gaps following main break

MIDWAY, Fla. — Some Midway water customers are raising concerns over the company’s notification process.

On Wednesday, the company sent notices to some customers to boil their water before using it.

Contractors broke a water main along Highway 98, breaching the system. But some customers say they never got the warning.

Some say they found out about it from Facebook posts. Dozens of people say they never get any kind of notice from Midway Water Systems.

Some customers did say they got a notice once the precautionary boil was lifted Friday morning.

Everyone WEAR News spoke to say they want the company to adopt a more uniform way of communicating with customers.

Comments to Midway Water System

“I wasn’t informed until I was coming through the neighborhood and saw the sign,” said Willie Bolden.

Early Wednesday morning, Midway Water System put out a precautionary water boil notice for residents along Highway 98 from Bergren Road to Edgewood Drive.

But they didn’t send out a text, email, or phone call.

A notice was only posted on the Santa Rosa County Emergency Management’s Facebook page.

Santa Rosa County Emergency Management Facebook post

The company posted small signs at the entrance to some affected neighborhoods. But not all.

“When she works from home, yeah. It does. It was worrying. And she didn’t know all day,” Bolden said. “She had no idea. No, she didn’t know until I got home and told her.”

Midway Water System landing page

The Midway Water System also posted a notice on their webpage.

Madison Anderson said her water went out at 10:30 a.m. and she didn’t see the sign at the front of her neighborhood until 4 p.m.

She texted our WEAR News reporter, saying “I know it’s not a huge company… but we should have a system for notifications like this.”

Messages from Jessica Hanssen

Jessica Hansen said the same thing, saying “we as mw customers get no notifications whatsoever about boil water notices, main breaks or leaks, or anything….”

Anonymous Midway customer

Another customer said larger utility companies have an automated system, and wonders why Midway Water System doesn’t.

A WEAR News crew did call Midway Water, and stopped by their office. The crew was told no one was available to explain their notification system.

For reference, WEAR News did call the Emerald Coast Utilities Authority since they deal with the same sort of notices.

They say, for 50 or more customers, they send out text messages, a news release to their media partners, and they post that same release to their website.

For an event that’s less than 50 people, they’ll leave doorhangers on people’s door to let them know what’s going on.