Wednesday marked the third day Susan Lyons has been living without running water.
“Very, very frustrated. It should have been fixed yesterday,” Lyons said. “This is like an emergency.”
A water main break created a mini-river on the 2000-block of Garnet Street on Monday afternoon.
“It was totally gushing. There was water going all the way down the street and all the way down to Victoria Avenue,” Lyons said.
“I spent the night at a hotel room because we had no water, no toilets,” she added.
Neighbour Robert McLean said the lack of running water has been quite the disruption.
“The water came into the yard and into the house and flooded my car,” he said.
“We couldn’t even move the cars because if you open the door, water rushes right into the vehicle,” he said. “They were pushing the cars out of the way manually. It was quite the ordeal.”
The city reached a record 72 water main breaks in August this year. Fifty-five of those are still waiting for repair.
There are usually only five or six leaks waiting for repair at a time, Pat Wilson, City of Regina’s waterworks director, said.
Dry, brittle ground is causing shifting and impacting water pipes and service connections.
“We’re getting an average of seven new leaks reported per day,” Wilson said.
The city has pulled water crews off of Water Works capital construction and slowed down some of their regular program work to help fix the breaks.
An estimated $1.8 million has been spent on water main breaks so far this year. Approximately $2.8 million was budgeted for the problem in 2017.
September usually sees the highest number of burst pipes.
Residents who see a water main break are asked to call Service Regina at 306-777-7000.