Residents in the Hawthorn Woods and Kildeer area remain under a boil advisory for the seventh day as crews work to restore water pressure and fix numerous water main breaks.
A boil order was issued last Sunday for certain residences in Forest Lake, Kildeer and Hawthorn Woods.
Aqua Illinois, a private water provider, reported they had been experiencing low water pressure.
Village of Hawthorn Woods officials said the issues were due to the severe drought in the region.
Aqua said they identified a leak at a commercial property connected to their system that caused their main storage tank to “fall very low.”
A separate leak occurred a few hours later. “Our wells were unable to provide enough water during the increased demand, so could not catch up our supply and pressurize the system during the day,” the company said.
Water pressure issues continued for several days and some residents reported they had no water at all.
Cases of bottled water have been made available for distribution at the Hawthorn Woods Aquatic Center.
Customers who experienced a loss of water service or low water pressure should boil their water for at least five minutes before using it.
Boiled or bottled water should be used for drinking, making ice, brushing teeth, washing dishes and food preparation until further notice.
“The precautionary boil order will remain in effect until the situation is resolved and laboratory sampling confirms that water quality has been fully restored. At this time, there is no timetable on when the precautionary boil order will be lifted,” Lake County Public Works said.
Aqua said they are using booster pumps in its reservoir but asked residents to conserve as much water as possible to help speed up service restoration.
The company also said they began to truck in water from elsewhere in the Aqua regional system to help increase the water supply and fill their storage tank.
On Thursday, Aqua said the system was continuing to stabilize and a vast majority of their customers have water at “acceptable” pressure levels.
“We need our water reserves to continue to increase before we can test to ensure the safety of our water,” the company said.
Illinois State Senator Dan McConchie said on Thursday that he knew of some homes that still did not have water.
“Access to clean, safe drinking water is a fundamental human right. My staff and I continue to work on ensuring every home affected by the outage has their water restored as soon as possible. Once the system is repaired, there will be a full investigation to ensure that a catastrophic system failure like this, does not happen again,” McConchie said.
The boil water advisory is expected to stay in effect through this weekend.
“We have all available resources focused on fixing this situation. We are still assessing conditions throughout this large system, and we don’t have an estimate at this time of when the challenges will be fully addressed,” Aqua said on Friday.