The water is back on in Rock Falls, Illinois... but now residents and business owners are under a boil order until further notice.
The city's entire sewer system was shut down on Tuesday, June 16th, 2015 after heavy rains overwhelmed the system's pumping stations. The water was turned back on Tuesday night.
On Wednesday, June 17th, 2015, Mayor Bill Wescott says they took water samples to Dixon, Illinois for testing. He says they expect to have those results back early Thursday morning and there's "no reason they shouldn't be clear."
Also on Wednesday, volunteers with the American Red Cross passed out the last 24-packs of water bottles to residents, who say the last couple days have been a nightmare.
"My block was completely engulfed in water," said Kathy Franks. "My basement was full of water. Not only that, but I had a mudslide."
"Never in my entire life - I've lived in that house in that area for 35 years and never once have we ever been flooded," she continued. "Every one of the sewer drains were not working. They were just not draining, so we had all this water everywhere."
As residents clean up, business owners are trying to reopen. On Wednesday, several restaurants were still closed. Others, like the Family Table Restaurant, are open... but under strict rules to boil all their water, which takes a lot of time.
"Way longer," said Owner and Manager, Mergim Lacaj. "Oh yeah, way longer. Usually, I'll come in and just press buttons and the coffee machines are going and the pop is obviously going and everything like that, but this - I have to boil water, come in and do it manually and it was way longer."
Even Rock Falls' Mayor says he has water in his basement. Right now though, he says he's trying to figure out exactly what happened and what the city can do to prevent it from happening again.
"The bottom line is - this particular incident was just overwhelming for our system," Mayor Bill Wescott said. "The system was designed to be able to handle more than it could handle, more than more came in."
Mayor Wescott says in 6 minutes, 14 feet of raw sewage flooded the city's pumping station.
"How do you fix that?" he asked. "Well, you can go down and put in all new bigger pipes throughout 80 miles throughout he entire town, which is not cost-effective."
"The other thing to look at is there's something we can do with the individual lift stations," he said. "I don't know if we can put in containment vaults, how big of a vault do you put in, how much can they hold..."
For now, technicians are around town checking things out and will put together a report for the city to review. Until then, Mayor Wescott says there's only one thing to do:
"Talk to God. Tell him not to make it rain so much."