No Frustration

For several days, we have had little or no water. It is almost impossible to take a shower. Doing the dishes is an hour-long event. Yesterday we called the water company (for the second or third time this summer, to say nothing of the times a representative has been out here due to someone else in the neighborhood calling). We were told that too many people were watering their lawns and the company's pumps couldn't keep up with the demand. Does that sound plausible to you? I didn't think so.

This same water company has spent the last several months putting in new water lines in parts of the Headlands area; now we have trouble getting water. At one point, we were told that our house and several of the neighbors' had no water because another neighbor was filling his pool. Another time, the shortage was blamed on a neighbor who said her water was brown when she tried to wash clothes. The water company's solution? To open a pipe and let water run down the bank onto the beach, which they called flushing the lines. This was done several times over the course of the last three months. Did it help? I think the only thing it did was to help make the lake bank more unstable than it already is, and keep the neighborhood from having water.

I probably sound like a whiner, and I admit I feel like one right now (Den says I need the practice). I know that millions of people the world over have never had clean, running water; but we have had it and we do expect it, so it is frustrating not to have it now. I wonder, is it possible that the new lines the company put in are now too big for the pumps that are being used to pump out the water? Maybe they just can"t pump it hard enough to create any pressure in the lines. Would they tell us if that were the case? Or maybe they just don't care about us because only six or eight houses are affected since we live on a dead end street off a dead end street. They wouldn't feel like that, would they?