I knew I was in trouble this morning when I flushed the john and it flushed fine but I didn’t hear the tank filling back up. So I turned on the water faucet and only a trickle came out. The above photo is the max water pressure coming out of my kitchen faucet.
From past experience with water problems this either meant:
- A water line to the house was broken
- Someone didn’t pay the water bill and it was shut-off
- A water main or worse was busted and our whole neighborhood was without water
I walked outside, looked at the water meter, it seemed okay, I talked to my upstairs neighbor and she had the same problem after checking, very, very low water pressure. Then I saw neighbors across the street so I asked them if they had water. They gave me the bad news.
They called the Department of Water Supply and after many busy signals got through. The DWS said two of the three wells supplying the area with water were broken. It might take TWO WEEKS to get fixed. And just because we have some water, very, very little coming out, we may have none later. Some areas already had no water and they would be driving water tankers to these areas for people to fill-up containers. These neighbors were already busy filling up whatever containers they had with water via the low pressure supply.
Holy crap, what a way to spend the holidays without water.
I got out my hurricane preparedness water containers out and slowly filled-up 20 gallons worth of water in case our supply goes down to zero. Hey, you gotta flush a toilet or take a shower somehow. Lucky for me I just happened to buy two cases of drinking water from Costco last night.
I guess as more people in the neighborhood went to work and were not at home the water pressure increased just a little, enough to me to take a shower but who knows how long that will last. I’m sure after 4:30pm when people start coming home water use will skyrocket and there will be zero pressure in the taps.
I shot some photos of my neighbors and asked them to call Carolyn at the paper for an interview, hopefully they follow through as they were busy headed to friends houses with plants that will need water along with a trip to Costco themselves for drinking water.
If water pressure stays the way it is now it’s somewhat tolerable, if it drops to zero then I may find a place to stay elsewhere. This bites.