Hot on the heels of last week's dramatic water main break at the Nevele Grand Resort that resulted in a recreation of Sam's Point's Ice Caves on a smaller scale, residents on Westwood Avenue awoke last Friday to find that they were without water service, and would continue to be so until late afternoon. According to village officials that day, a water main broke sometime that morning at 43 Westwood Avenue, and the village water department turned off the water for all houses feeding off that line until it was repaired at the end of the day.

"I woke up at six to no water, no coffee…and three small children under the age of ten with no shower," said one resident who lives on Claire Court.

According to Building Code Enforcement Officer Brian Schug, it was an eight inch cast iron main that broke on Friday.

"The police department started to get some calls from people driving up Westwood Avenue seeing water coming down the hill there," said Schug. Once the water department was mobilized, it was discovered just how difficult the cold weather was making things.

"It was the exposed surface of the road that the eight inch main was under, so there was no insulation value from the snow on the ground either," said Schug. He said that there was a little less than four feet of frost in the ground.

"I haven't seen frost that thick in the seven years I've been here," said Schug. He added that the frost-bitten ground also impeded the water department's workers from digging into the ground easily, slowing their repairs down. It was hoped that the line would be fixed by noon that day, but it wasn't completed until about four o'clock.

Since then, there have been reports that the water coming from the repaired line is brown or dark, as it's filled with sediment. Similar reports came from the Ellenville School campus following the water main break at the former Hydro factory-site on Friday, January 16.

"There's sediment in the pipes all the time that just kind of sits at the bottom of the pipe. When the pressure goes back on, the pressure of the water through those pipes brings that sediment up off the bottom of the pipe, so it always is brown once you turn the water back on," said one village official, speaking about the phenomenon in general.

However, Jamie Cathcart, a resident of the Canal Lock Apartments on Center Street, has said that her water's been brown for close to six weeks, beginning even before the break at factory in January.

"My daughter got a rash," she said, referring to the effects of using the water. "My next-door neighbor has a rash on her body, and it got so bad it looked like somebody set her on fire."

According to Cathcart, despite calls to the Ulster County Health Department, no one from the agency has yet to come to her apartment to test her water.

Calls placed to the Ulster County Health Department this week were not returned.

While the water has been getting progressively clearer over the weeks, sediment was still turning her water tan as of Monday this week.

While he hadn't heard anything about the situation at the Canal Lock Apartments, Brian Schug noted that the complex "is going through a water heater renovation."

"When they're disconnecting the plumbing and reconnecting it, there may be some issues related to water there. They had a 25-year-old water heater that was about 400 gallons in size that basically stopped working on them about a week and a half ago, and they have a temporary water heater in there now."

Schug also said that the former village hall at 81 North Main Street also suffered a water main break last Tuesday, January 27. Because of the pipe's size and age, the work to repair it required the assistance of a company from Albany, which came with special equipment to aid the crew in their work.

But despite these breaks and reports, Schug said that things could, and have been, much worse. Water Department Director Mike Avery, told Schug, said that he'd seen winters with far more line breakages by this time.

"He's seen in other winters upwards of fifteen to twenty lines that were owned by the village that were ruptured," said Schug. "Even though it's been a cold winter, I think that we've gotten lucky when it comes to village owned lines that have been broken."

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