More than a month has passed since Nowata city officials said residents' water should be clear again after water was flushed out to combat an off-coloring problem. However, neighbors' water is still murky and brown, and some are quickly losing patience.
Images from neighbors filling their bathtubs with brown water nearly mimic the original issue city officials jumped on earlier in the summer. City Manager Melanie Clark initially said after the water was flushed out of the system, it would only be a week before neighbors' water began clearing up. However, she soon found out there was an issue with that plan.
It turned out the water that was being pumped in to replace the flushed out water was still dirty, because the area where it was held needed to be cleaned. Clark has stressed the water has been clean to drink, and now says after it's flushed out again, the clear coloring should return in a couple weeks.
"It was brown-brown," stressed Nowata resident Patricia Speer about her Sunday evening bath water. "So I turned it off and I thought, 'no, there's no way I'm going to get in that.' It looked like river water."
City officials say an estimated 5,000 people could still be affected by the brown water.
