• Friday June 2nd 2023 12:45 PM:  The recent Boil Water Notice has ended for the Sabbath Rest Rd area in Pinecroft.  All of our sample results are in, and our tests show that the water is not contaminated.  If you are an affected customer and we have your phone number on file, you should be receiving voice and/or text messages from us in the next few minutes.

  Click here to read the official Problem Corrected notice.

• At any time, there may be active Tier 1 notifications not listed on this site. For isolated incidents that only affect a small number of customers, all notices are personally hand-delivered in plastic door-hanger bags.

• There is an active Tier 2 (non-emergency) public notification due to a Thallium MCL exceedance.  Click here for more.

• The Altoona Water Authority lists all Tier 3 violations (if any) in our annual Consumer Confidence Report. Click here to view the current CCR.

About Public Notification

The Altoona Water Authority is committed to following the Public Notification guidelines established by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. DEP mandates that public water suppliers must notify their customers of any threat or possible threat to public health. There are three tier levels for Public Notifications:

Tier 1

A Tier 1 notification is issued when there is the possibility of an acute threat to public health.  Most Tier 1 situations result from water main breaks that cause a complete loss of positive water pressure.  If you are affected by a Tier 1 violation or situation, we will notify you directly within 24 hours. You will most likely receive a formal paper notice, which will be placed in a plastic door hanger bag and hand-delivered to your home.

For Tier 1 situations affecting a large number of customers, we may send voice and/or text messages instead of distributing paper notices. To deliver those messages, we have partnered with RAVE Mobile Safety, the provider of the Smart911 app. The Blair County Emergency Management Agency has also chosen to provide emergency alerts to county residents through Smart911.

When we send voice and text messages, we obtain those phone numbers from our billing database. (If we have your phone number on file, it is printed on upper-right corner of your bill. If that phone number is missing or is incorrect, please call us to update it during normal business hours at 814-949-2540, Option 1.)

However, our phone number records are linked the person or entity responsible for paying each water or sewer bill. So if you are a renter who does not pay your own bill, we do not have your phone number in our database. Instead, we will notify your landlord or housing authority about the Tier 1 situation and ask that they pass the information on to their tenants.

Fortunately, Smart911 allows more people—renters, temporary residents, and additional household members—to also receive our emergency alerts. Simply go to https://www.smart911.com/ to sign up. You will be asked to enter your name and contact information, and to verify your location in a map. If you enter a location that is in Blair County and in the Altoona Water Authority service area, you will be asked if you want to receive alerts from the county, from the water authority, or from both.

All of our emergency alerts are location-based. If we have your phone number in our billing database or if you sign up for Smart911, the Altoona Water Authority will ONLY contact you if your address is in the affected area for a particular Tier 1 situation.

If you receive a call from us, your caller ID will display the phone number 814-949-2266.

Due to the immediate and time-sensitive nature of a Tier 1 emergency, the Altoona Water Authority will most likely choose to send only voice and text messages instead of emails for each event. This website will also be updated as needed.

Tier 2

A Tier 2 notification is issued when a failure occurs, but there is no immediate threat to public health. When a Tier 2 situation occurs, we will print a notice on the upper-right corner of your water bill. We will also update this website with more information and a link to the official Public Notice. After a Tier 2 situation is identified, the public notice must be posted within 30 days.

Tier 3

A Tier 3 notification is issued for situations that have no direct impact at all to public health—usually reporting or recordkeeping violations. Tier 3 notifications must be issued within 1 year.