BLAND — Despite a June 2 public service announcement on Bland Mo, Small Town USA Facebook page, residents of the city of the Bland are experiencing daily water outages outside of the expected timeline as the city’s public works director works with contractors to connect and repair water mains.

In an attempt to allow residents to plan around the outages, the city announced on its Facebook page that residents could expect “interruption in water services every day through June 15.” However, they expected to schedule the interruption between 9 a.m. and noon Monday through Friday. If work wasn’t completed during that time frame, water would be shut off again between 1 and 3 p.m. to complete.

As of June 7, that plan has yet to fully work. Public Works Director John Dean said by midday Monday a water main break paused work on the project. 

“A line broke earlier in the day yesterday,” he said. “We fixed it.”

Water was restored and workers went home. After he left for the day, reports began coming in that residents were losing water pressure.

“An old valve that was due to be removed on Tuesday broke (Monday night) and water was coming out of the ground,” Dean said.

The broken valve caused the existing water tower on the corner of Sycamore and Kansas City streets to empty.

“Water was restored last night around 9 p.m. and pressure was restored between 10 and 11 p.m.,” Dean said. “One of the reasons we are redoing everything is to replace the old system.”

Dean said infrastructure updates will hopefully decrease the number of broke mains and water interruptions.

“Things are going to happen,” he added. “We are in the process of doing away with the old system.”

Although the city was hoping to plan around the scheduled outages and post the public service announcement on June 2 to their Facebook page, Dean says they are better off checking the Facebook page for updates.

As of 1:26 p.m. on June 7, Bland City Clerk Diane Decker had posted updates six times in 24 hours, including a notice of the main break, water restoration, notifying residents that the service time would be interrupted at 7 a.m. instead of 9 a.m. and that services would not be interrupted on Tuesday.

“This is part of it. Water is not down today across town,” Dean said on Tuesday morning. “They are hooking up a few things on a new line, so maybe three or four people will be without water for a brief period of time.”

Dean asks that residents be patient.

“I am not turning it off for no reason,” he said. “Yesterday they were without water for a long period of time. Maggi is working as quickly as they can. I am working as quickly as I can. It is a large project and things are going to happen.”

Comments on the city of Bland’s Facebook page asked if the water needed to be boiled because of the shut-off.

“No,” Dean said. “Our water is chlorinated, so a boil order is not necessary. I was around town (June 1) testing. Our chlorine levels are exactly where they need to be so folks don’t have to worry.”

However, Dean said he has had calls where residents said the water is slightly cloudy.

“If that happens, just run the water until it clears.”

He added that the public works department is flushing hydrants around town to prevent the water from being cloudy as well.

The city of Bland has been working on grants for its water project for the past seven years. They broke ground at the beginning of 2022 to replace old pipes and fire hydrants that were out of order. The purpose of the city-wide shut-off is to hook up the new water mains, cap the old water mains, and eventually connect to the new water tower. The work is being completed by Don Maggi Construction located in Rolla.