HOUSTON – Residents in a neighborhood in northwest Harris County say they have been living without water since Thursday.
Residents said they were unable to wash their dishes or drink water from their faucets, and are now under a boil water notice due to a water main break.
"You can't wash dishes. It's hard to stay even clean, you know, sanitary wise," said Karen Valenzuela, a resident. "You know, you can't do anything."
Even businesses like a nearby commercial plumbing company said they have been impacted. They not only need water for the basics, they use it to test their products.
"We pressure test those things," said Scott Hubert, a company controller. "We use water to do that, and so it's slowed us down quite a bit the last few days."
Customers said they have also been frustrated because instead of receiving prompt service to repair the problem, they were told by the water company to exercise patience.
They told Local 2 their patience wore out after days of broken promises.
"When we called Thursday at noon, they told us two hours and we would have water back, for scheduled maintenance is what they told us," said Valenzuela. "Then, we called at two, we called at four, we called at five. No water. No water Friday."
In a statement to Local 2, Aqua Texas blamed the water main break on a contractor it hired to move its waterline, "to accommodate a storm sewer line. The contractor temporarily repaired the initial damage, then another related leak occurred."
People said over the past few days the water pressure has returned sporadically, but most of the time, it hasn't stayed on consistently for more than ten minutes.
Aqua Texas said the water was completely restored to the area 5:30 p.m. Monday night.