Residents in the Hawthorn Woods and Kildeer area are no longer under a boil advisory and water pressure has been restored to normal following a week of water disruptions.
A boil order was issued on July 2 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 were made available for distribution at the Hawthorn Woods Aquatic Center.
Customers who experienced a loss of water service or low water pressure were urged to boil their water for at least five minutes before using it.
Boiled or bottled water was recommended for drinking, making ice, brushing teeth, washing dishes and food preparation.
“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 earlier this week.
Aqua said they were 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 had 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.
Aqua said in an update Saturday that they identified another significant leak at Spencer Loomis Elementary School.
The water system was back to normal operating pressure Sunday morning and water samples were submitted to a laboratory.
The samples showed the water is safe for use and meets approval by the Illinois EPA, the company said, adding that the boil order was lifted.
“We will lift the lawn watering ban in 48 hours. As a standard practice, we will continue to monitor our system’s stability. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your continued patience,” Aqua said Sunday afternoon.