ASHEVILLE, N.C. (AP) — A North Carolina mountain city where thousands faced water outages resumed production Wednesday at a water treatment facility at the heart of the problem, officials said.

The plant is producing water for distribution, city officials announced in a news release Wednesday evening, adding that a return to full service was expected "soon."

David Melton, Asheville's director of water resources, said at a midday news conference that the process of restoring service would take time.

"This is good news, but I want people to be very cautious," Melton said, adding that those who were under a boil-water advisory should continue to heed the precaution.

Melton said about 38,500 customers were affected by problems, including outages and boil-water advisories.

Melton said the facility went down Saturday as some filters and other equipment froze. He said the water system can normally function without that plant but that frozen and burst pipes throughout the system drew down the water supply and exacerbated the problem.

Thousands have been dealing with water outages or a boil-water advisory after days of extremely cold temperatures in the mountain city of about 94,000.

Boil-water advisories remained in effect Wednesday evening for parts of the western service area — inlcuding west of Johnson School Boulevard to Dogwood Road in Candler and Smokey Park Highway to U.S. 19/23 through Candler — and in the southern distribution area, south of Swannanoa River Road to Airport Road and from the Fairview community to Highway 191/Brevard Road.

City officials said the advisories would be lifted once testing verifies that no bacteria is in the water.