Includes a local news video:

http://www.abcactionnews.com/news/local-news/i-team-investigates/i-team-wal-mart-stores-that-were-suddenly-closed-for-plumbing-issues-havent-sought-permits

The text story at the above link does include a more detailed explanation from a Walmart spokesman for the closure of one of the stores, but, as pointed out before, the questions remain as to: 1) why all 5 stores simultaneously; 2) how do they know it is going to take exactly 6 months; and 3) why has no effort been made to start work at any of the stores. One wonders if it is just a cover for closing the stores indefinitely, but they don't want the negative publicity of permamnently shutting stores in a (supposedly) improving economy. Clearly, they're getting the negative publicity anyway.

I have another thought, which is that there might be some serious safety or health issue at the stores, possibly due to some specific material used in the construction of these specific stores, which they don't want to publicize, and so they don't want to start mitigation work until until the current uproar has faded away, as such uproars always do.

Here is the specific quote from the above link:

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Walmart issued a statement regarding the plumbing issues at the Brandon store.

“The issues mostly relate to clogs and water leaks in the plumbing - we’ve had persistent issues over the last several years,“ said a Walmart spokesperson said.

“These incidents impact the availability of water and create drainage issues for critical areas of the store which impacts our ability to serve customers,” she said.

“Normally, we do our best to avoid disrupting a store’s operations. However, given this particular store had one of the highest incidences of plumbing issues in the entire fleet and in order to reduce the costs associated with these incidents, we felt it was in the store’s best interest to invest in making the necessary improvements to resolve these issues,” the spokesperson said.

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