Residents across Caryville and Jacksboro were told Thursday to avoid all contact with their tap water — no drinking, no cooking, not even touching it — after diesel-contaminated soil runoff made its way into an underground aquifer that feeds the local water system. The advisory forced the closure of the Campbell County Courthouse and three schools for Friday, leaving an entire community scrambling for bottled water and answers.
The contamination traces back to a pile of diesel-contaminated soil that the Campbell County Road Department had been storing under state orders, according to a statement from Caryville-Jacksboro Utilities Commission (CJUC) Manager Frank Wallace reported by WLAF. Wallace said rainfall leeched fuel from that soil pile into a karst depression that connects to an underground aquifer roughly three hours upstream from CJUC's Cave Springs water intake. That geologic pathway is what turned a soil storage issue into a drinking-water emergency for thousands of households.
As soon as utility officials learned of the runoff, they shut down the Cave Springs treatment facility, notified state environmental officials, began flushing fire hydrants throughout the distribution system, and submitted water samples to the State of Tennessee for lab testing, the station's report states. Those samples must come back clean before the advisory can be lifted, meaning the timeline for restoring service still hinges on state approval.
Early Confusion Over the Source
The public messaging around the contamination wasn't entirely consistent in its first hours. WBIR reported that early utility communications had cautioned residents that water from the Cave Springs plant might have been compromised by nearby gas station construction, before more detailed statements clarified that the actual source was the county road department's soil storage site. That same WBIR report noted the video segment titled “Don't use tap water for drinking, cooking or body contact in Caryville,” which underscored just how sweeping the restriction was — covering not just consumption but any skin contact at all.
Not every nearby community is affected. WBIR also reported that the neighboring LaFollette Utilities Board confirmed its own system and customers were completely unaffected by the petroleum spill impacting CJUC, since LaFollette operates a separate municipal water distribution system from Caryville and Jacksboro's supplier.
Schools and Courthouse Shut Down
The advisory's reach extended well beyond kitchen sinks. Caryville Elementary, Jacksboro Elementary, Jacksboro Middle School, and the Campbell County Courthouse were all ordered closed for Friday because they depend on CJUC's tap water for daily operations, a disruption that touches a large share of the roughly 11,060 residents CJUC serves across Campbell County, according to federal drinking water system records compiled by TapWaterData.
CJUC's own 2025 Water Quality Report, filed with state regulators, shows the utility relies on Norris Lake, two wells on Ridge Road, and Cave Springs on McDeerman Road to supply its customers. In that same filing, the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation rated CJUC's source waters as “reasonably susceptible” to contamination — a vulnerability rating that this week's spill appears to have borne out.
Why Boiling Water Won't Help
Unlike a typical boil-water notice issued after bacterial contamination, this advisory bars any use of the water because boiling does nothing to remove fuel. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has stated that boiling tap water does not eliminate petroleum or chemical contaminants like diesel fuel, and can actually worsen exposure by vaporizing volatile organic compounds into household air. That guidance explains why officials moved straight to a full do-not-use order rather than the more familiar boil advisory residents might expect during a water emergency.
The underlying geology made the spill spread faster than it might have elsewhere. Hydrogeological research from the U.S. Geological Survey on East Tennessee watersheds notes that karst terrain — shaped by sinkholes, caves, and subterranean drainage — allows surface spills to bypass normal soil filtration and move rapidly into underground aquifers. That karst pathway is precisely how rainfall carried diesel from a roadside soil pile into an aquifer three hours upstream of the Cave Springs intake.
What Happens Once the Advisory Lifts
Once the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation approves testing and officially cancels the advisory, CJUC says all customers will be instructed to flush their household cold water taps for a minimum of two minutes before drinking or cooking with the water, per the utility's standard emergency protocols. That step is meant to clear out stagnant water that sat in service lines during the shutdown.
For now, key questions remain unresolved. It is not yet clear how long state testing will take before the water supply is cleared, whether any fuel reached residential taps before the Cave Springs plant was shut down, or what oversight the Campbell County Road Department may face over how it stored the contaminated soil in the first place.
