Weather-related problems just won't quit in Dewey. "It was just bubbling up out the ground and you could see water everywhere," says Dewey water district president John Hurd. Just days after the biggest snow storm in nearly a decade, another weather related disaster. "The whole town doesn't have any water," says Hurd. "You can't do any laundry of course," says homeowner Rhonda Hauser. "You can't take a shower, you can't flush your commode you can't do dishes, you can't do anything," Hurd adds. But no water means more than just an inconvenience for carpenter Mike Patton. He's supposed to have a rental home finished in less than three days. "The water shut off so i cannot clean up after myself," Patton says as he holds up his paint-splattered hands. But patton's mess was nothing compared to the one Hauser woke up to this morning. "Lots of water outside, no water inside." The culprit was a small piece of pipe that broke off underground and allowed water to start shooting up and running all the way down Main Street. That water made it all the way to the Hauser house a block away, where it turned into huge sheets of ice. "Our whole yard was covered, it looked like an ice skating rink basically. So I thought, oh, the kids will have fun playing on that, but throughout the morning it was just filling up more and more with water," she says. Normally a drainage ditch at the end of Hauser's driveway would have caught that water, but with snow piles in the way... "It's just kind of become a reservoir here for all that water," she says. That's when Hauser decided to call Hurd. "Probably the whole town hates us because we asked them to turn off the water, but it was either that, or I don't know how much water would have come in," she says. Workers tried to patch the pipe for hours, but with frozen ground and snow all-around.. it's not an easy fix. "It's all the way down at the bottom, our arms aren't long enough," jokes Hurd. But in all reality, it was a big job for Dewey, and it wasn't cheap either. "We're trying our best," Hurd says. "It's a 69 cent piece that's going to cost us probably a couple thousand by the time we get an excavator in here." Workers say the water problem was patched up just before ten o'clock Thursday night, but it takes several more hours for water to come back online. After that the entire town of Dewey will be under a boil order until further notice. Hauser says for her that's not an issue; she has a plan for her family that doesn't involve the faucet. "I'm planning on going out to eat for dinner," she says smiling.
