Since Noah was born, I have consumed, on average, roughly 120-150 ounces of liquid every day. Of that, 75-90% is water (coffee, herbal tea, or very watery juice), and of that, I drink about two-thirds at home.
Unfortunately, we don’t have any. Neither do 50,000 of our neighbors.
On Thursday, a massive water main 5 miles from our house broke. Thursday was a rough morning, and we didn’t manage to get going in time to hear NPR, so we fed Noah water, drank water, made coffee, washed our dishes, and generally behaved normally.
This morning, we read in the newspaper that our community is supposed to boil all tap water for 3 minutes before using it to drink or bathe. It’s full of icky bacteria.
Um. Ok, one, that sucks. I’m from Milwaukee, so I take these water safety warnings Very Seriously. Can you say cryptosporidium?
But two, why weren’t we alerted??? The water main broke at 4:30 am on Thursday, and by pure luck, we found out we were in the affected community around 7:30 am on Friday. After our coffee. (Yeah, great.)
We still haven’t gotten any kind of official notice! Hello? Local government? You HAVE TO TELL PEOPLE if you expect them not to USE THEIR WATER.
And although this may be shocking for the local government to learn, some people do not subscribe to the local paper or watch the local tv news every day. I swear, I’m not making that up. The only way to make sure they hear about these kinds of things is when the government tells them. Specifically. Personally, somehow.
I like the idea of a flyer, but the reverse-911 system they claim to be using would work too. If it worked.
The online version of the newspaper informs us that we may be stinky and dehydrated until Sunday! Local TV news informs us that animal lovers have bought all the water at the local grocery stores for the shelter in the community.
Right now I have about 3 gallons of water cooling on the stove, maybe a little more. Tomorrow Noah and I will go on an adventure to a grocery store out of our neighborhood to buy some bottled water.
But this sucks. And I really hope that no one gets sick, especially that no one gets sick because they weren’t notified about the problem.
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Wow. Kristin and I would be among those faceless throngs that neither subscribe to the local paper nor watch tv. We would be clueless until told by someone.
Luckily my mom watches the local news and would be the first on the phone to call and tell us not to drink our water.
Unlukily my mother tends to overreact and tell us not to do lots of things for our safety and we’ve gotten to the point where we just agree and then keep doing what we were doing.
Hope you guys don’t get sick!
Happy Holidays! We miss y’all! The only reason J and I knew of the water warning last summer was because we went to a work picnic at St. Mt. on one of the hottest days of the year and they didn’t have county water. It was pretty miserable. But even local restaurants didn’t seem to know! Creepy. I’m wishing you chemically treated water SOON!
P.S. J is coming into town again in Feb.
There was a water warning last summer???
Some days I am more scared than others about where we live.
I’m happy to report that the water has been deemed safe again. And we would love to see J in Feb. Too bad you and the babies can’t come too.