Jun. 22—Health codes require businesses serving food to close if they lose water, but when a water line break disrupted water service along Russ Avenue in Waynesville on Wednesday, Publix managed to stay open anyway — filling the morning bakery cases with fresh goods, butchering meat and serving up all the regular deli fare.
Publix had no bathrooms, so employees took a trip across the street to Ingles when they had to use the bathroom, and the steady stream of green Publix shirts traipsing through the competition raised some eyebrows.
The early morning bakery crew fetched bottled water from the shelves to mix up the day's baked goods. And the butchers in the meat department balanced a jug of water over the sink for a make-shift hand washing station.
While McDonalds, Popeye's, Dodge City Steakhouse, Pizza Hut and other food establishments impacted by the water line break closed due to the lack of water, it seemed like business as usual at Publix. And it turns out, this is allowed thanks to a pre-ordained "standard operating procedure" the grocer has on file with the state health department for just such an eventuality.
No notice
Morning shift employees were blindsided when they arrived to work early Wednesday morning and discovered they had no water. While Waynesville Public Works crews had cut off water before midnight on Tuesday, no attempt was made to notify the public that there wasn't water service.
So the McDonald's workers who rose early to start making biscuits? They missed out on what could have been a morning sleeping in. While some business sent folks home and stayed closed for the day, others, like McDonald's and Dodge City, reopened later in the afternoon once water came back on.
When water was cut off late Tuesday night, however, most businesses had already closed, so it was unclear who the town could have notified.
"Everything was closed by the time we turned the water off," Waynesville water and sewer superintendent Wayne Bolin said. "There wasn't anyone there."
Waynesville Town Manager Rob Hites confirmed that businesses were left in the dark as they opened up Wednesday morning as the town had not informed them of the water outage.
"By the time they got down there and realized what they had going on, there were no businesses open to notify," Hites said.
Publix workaround
Apparently, the makeshift sinks set up using jugs of water off the shelf at Publix are completely legitimate under state public health guidelines. For the record, workers didn't merely splash their hands with water from gallon jugs, but used the kind with the little plastic spigots that open and shut, creating a continuous trickle of water.
Publix has a "standard operating procedure", or SOP, on file with the state that stipulates procedures to follow for a store to stay open if it loses water. But to make sure everything was on the up and up, local inspectors with the Haywood County Health and Human Services Department paid the store a visit Wednesday morning.
While Publix had been without water and cranking up the day's food prep since dawn, the store didn't notify the county health department until around 8:30 a.m. via an email that it was operating under the SOP.
However, having an SOP of file permits the store to launch into the procedures without in-the-moment approval from any governing agency, according to Kayley Myers, the Food and Lodging Program Specialist for Haywood County Environmental Health Services.
At 11 a.m., Myers visited Publix to check in and ensure the SOP was being followed.
"We just wanted to make sure everyone is doing what they're supposed to do," Myers said.
She said it is common practice for Environmental Health Services to visit an area when there is a water outage or boil-water advisory to ensure all guidelines are being followed. While there, they checked Publix's copy of the SOP and inspected the store to make sure it was being followed properly.
With no water, the big issue in a food service location becomes the challenge of hand washing, but Publix had a solution.
"For hand washing, your water does not have to be heated, but it does have to be free-flowing. That's usually with a spout," Myers said, adding that Publix did follow these requirements.
Publix was also without a restroom — presenting another issue for a location with food service. The store was in the process of ordering portable restrooms during the visit from Environmental Health Services and was able to show that.
"Typically, we do require restaurants to have a bathroom if they're in operation. It has to be conveniently located," Myers said. "We'll work with people, but as long as they're in the process of resolving it and it's not an ongoing issue, that's okay."
Publix workers had grabbed so many jugs of water off the shelves that the store had ordered an emergency water delivery, which was en route by the time water came back on Wednesday afternoon.
Management at Publix referred The Mountaineer to Publix's corporate offices for comment. As of press time, the corporate office has not responded to requests for information.
Editor Becky Johnson contributed to this story.
