Nashville, Tennessee Water Outage Today

Who runs the water in Nashville: system profile

Federal records name Metro Water Services as the public water system for Nashville, with about 778,153 people on its mains.

What feeds the taps in Nashville

Nashville drinks surface water. Metro Water Services draws it from Cumberland River-Plant 2 Omohundro and treats it before it goes into the distribution system. Treatment points named in EPA's facility list include Harrington Water Plant, Omohundro Water Plant, and Omohundro Plant. After treatment the water is held in 32 storage tanks and reservoirs, which is the buffer that keeps taps running for a few hours after a pump or main fails.

What this means in an outage. A surface-water system depends on its plant staying online. If the plant, the raw-water pumps or the power feeding them fails, pressure can fall across the entire service area at once, and a precautionary boil notice tends to cover whole zones rather than the single street of a main break.

Main breaks and shutoffs in Nashville: the usual causes

Which failures hit Nashville hardest follows from its weather, its housing stock and how it is supplied.

• Freezing weather. Nashville sees about 68 days a year with a low at or below 32°F, and 11 days at or below 20°F. The coldest morning in the 2015 through 2025 record came on February 19, 2015. The longest stretch with highs that never rose above freezing ran 6 days, ending February 20, 2015. Frost pushes into shallow service lines first. Mains follow when the ground heaves and thaws, which is why break counts climb a day or two after the temperature swings.
• Storm-driven power loss. Thunderstorm wind, hail and tornado reports in Davidson County number 572 since 2015. Pump stations and treatment plants that depend on Nashville Electric Service (NES) run on the electric grid, so a storm that downs power lines can lower water pressure even when no pipe is damaged.
• Flooding and heavy rain. NOAA logged 91 flood, flash flood and heavy rain reports in Davidson County from 2015 through 2026, and 10 days a year bring an inch of rain or more. High water can wash out the ground under buried pipe, flood pump stations and push treatment plants past their limits, which is why boil notices so often follow a flood.
• Digging and utility work. Street projects, fiber installation and excavation near buried pipe regularly cut mains in Nashville with no warning, usually on a day with perfectly ordinary weather.
• Planned shutoffs and a problem at one address. Valve replacements and new connections are announced ahead, often with door hangers. If neighbors have water, check your own shutoff valve, meter and pressure regulator before calling.

Freeze, heat and rain: the Nashville weather record

Main break season in Nashville runs from late fall into early spring, with the coldest stretch around December through February.

A note on the numbers: they are modeled for the city center and averaged over eleven years, so they show how often Nashville sees each kind of weather, not what any one thermometer read on a given day.

Nashville boil water notices and EPA compliance record

Since 2015, EPA's record for Metro Water Services shows no health-based violations. It also lists 3 monitoring or reporting entries that are about paperwork rather than water quality, such as a missed sample or a late report.

Most recent entries, all monitoring or reporting:

• June 2024: A coliform bacteria testing violation It is marked resolved.
• May 2024: A coliform bacteria testing violation It is marked resolved.

Boil water notices in Nashville are precautions, not findings. When pressure drops, Metro Water Services tells affected customers to boil water until two rounds of lab tests are clean, a process that normally takes 24 to 48 hours after service is restored, under oversight from the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC).

Lead service lines and old plumbing in Nashville

The most recent 90th-percentile lead result filed for Metro Water Services is 0.8 ppb (2025). The federal action level is 15 ppb, so that result is comfortably below it.

28.4% of occupied homes in Nashville were built before 1970, and lead service lines and solder stayed legal until the federal ban in 1986. After any outage that disturbs the pipes, run the cold tap 30 seconds to 2 minutes before drinking, and ask Metro Water Services about its lead service line inventory.

How long a water outage lasts in Nashville

A crew that arrives at an ordinary main break in Nashville usually needs 4 to 8 hours to isolate the pipe, dig, repair, flush and restore pressure. Large transmission mains, deep pipes and breaks under busy streets can take a day or more. With 778,153 people on the system, a break on a main that feeds a whole district can leave thousands of homes dry at once, and crews may close valves several blocks away to isolate it.

Metro Water Services will post an estimated restoration time for a break that affects many customers; ask for the repair crew's estimate when you call.

How much water to keep on hand in Nashville

The average household in Nashville has about 2.2 people, so FEMA's minimum of one gallon per person per day comes to roughly 7 gallons for three days and 31 gallons for two weeks.

• 19.4% of homes are in buildings with 20 or more units. Upper floors lose pressure first, and rooftop tanks and booster pumps depend on building power.
• A standard water heater is a ready-made 40-gallon reserve. Shut off its power or gas, open a hot tap somewhere in the house, and draw from the drain valve.
• If a planned shutoff or storm is coming, fill the tub and some buckets for flushing toilets and washing; keep drinking water in clean sealed containers.

Water systems near Nashville, side by side

Water outage pages for nearby cities

Franklin, TN · Clarksville, TN · Bowling Green, KY · Huntsville, AL