‘You can’t flush, can’t shower’: Shenandoah residents share impact of water outage

SHENANDOAH, Pa. — A large portion of a Schuylkill County Borough is completely out of water.

Restaurants are closed, schools let out early, and many people living in Shenandoah are having to get their water from a tanker truck. Borough Manager Mike Cadau said it’s hard to believe.

“We’re experiencing something that we’ve never experienced in our Borough, and no water,” said Cadau.

The company Aqua Pennsylvania runs the Borough’s water system. It said a leak in the main distribution line is to blame, but Cadau said the company didn’t relay that information to him until hours after the line was shut down.

“A notification never occurred to the Borough or the fire department when they shut the plant water off. I’m assuming it was an extreme reason they had to shut it off, but there should have been a notification,” said Cadau.

Aqua disputes that claim, saying they contacted the Borough about the issue Monday night.

As a temporary measure, Aqua provided a source of water where people could fill up jugs.

“They did get us a truck, 1,200 gallons of water that still needs to be boiled, but at least we have something,” said Cadau.

That’s where we met Miguel Gerena, collecting water for his family.

“It’s kind of crazy. You can’t flush, can’t shower, can’t brush your teeth,” said Gerena.

He first realized there was a problem after he dropped his kids off for school.

“I ended up getting a message about two hours after the fact to pick up all the kids. They ended up dismissing early because apparently the school doesn’t have any water either,” said Gerena.

Aqua sent us a statement explaining the problem further, saying in part:

“The issue stems from the recent extreme cold and subsequent leaks to the water system… We apologize for the inconvenience and thank our customers for their patience and understanding. Aqua is working diligently to resolve this issue.”

Cadau said, when they do finally resolve the issue, there will be some explaining to do.

“There should be hearings about this. When you have a whole town that loses water, we need to find out why, what happened, what occurred, and how can you prevent this from ever happening again,” said Cadau.

Aqua Pennsylvania says some parts of the Borough still do have water service right now, but everyone is under a boil water advisory. On Aqua’s website, officials estimate that the water won’t be back on until 8 p.m. Wednesday night.