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PHILIPPI -- Pumping issues at the Philippi water plant led to the early closing of three Barbour County schools Wednesday.
The City of Philippi first announced the pumping problems Wednesday morning.
"We are experiencing an issue at the water plant that is causing a system wide outage," a City of Philippi social media post stated Wednesday morning. "Crews have been working around the clock on the issue. At this time we don't have an ETA for when service will be restored."
An hour later, the City of Philippi posted, "We have experienced pumping issues at the water plant. We currently have a pump running but it is only operating at less than 20% of our normal capacity. Therefore, we need everyone to start conserving water. At this time, please only use water if it's an emergency."
Later in the morning, the Barbour County Board of Education announced the three schools would be closing early.
"We have received more information from the City of Philippi about their water pumping situation," a Barbour County BOE social media post stated. "Based on their current situation we have decided to release students three hours early at Philippi Elementary, Philippi Middle School and Philip Barbour.
"Busses will begin running at 12 p.m. at Philip Barbour and 12:10 p.m. at Philippi Elementary and Philippi Middle. If you have a situation that you will have difficulty getting your child at that time please contact the school to make arrangements. This will not affect the Belington end of the county or Kasson."
The city is asking that you please conserve water as much as possible.
All Barbour County Schools were operating on a two-hour weather delay on Wednesday morning.