Water line breaks at closed Charleroi plant
A water line break Tuesday forced the shut-off of water to the former World Kitchen Plant in Charleroi.
Fire Chief Robert Whiten Jr. said the department received a call about 1 a.m. from the plant’s security concerning the break.
“We went down there, but we can’t turn the water off, and we can’t turn the power off,” Whiten explained. “(The plant) is private property and unless it’s an actual fire, we can’t do anything.”
Whiten said one of the plant’s few remaining employees ordered the water to be turned off until the situation could be addressed Tuesday.
“She said we’re just going to have a fire watch crew down there,” he said. “Some of their sprinkler systems and fire systems are still up and running just in case.”
Contact was made with the Authority of the Borough of Charleroi (ABC) and West Penn Power.
The break did not affect any other parts of the borough.
Chad Warfield, ABC’s director of operations, did not know much about the break, other than authority crews responded.
“They had some kind of leak down there and we just went down and shut it off for them,” he said. “They couldn’t get their valve shut off so we shut the main valve going in for them.”
As of Tuesday afternoon, neither Whiten nor Warfield was aware if the leak had been fixed.
Calls to the plant went unanswered
World Kitchen Plant produced its last Pyrex products April 10, after 132 years in operation in the Mon Valley. Operations were moved to an Anchor Hocking plant in Lancaster, Ohio.