By Ariel Rothfield, originally posted on August 4, 2016

DAVIESS COUNTY, Mo. – Tooshdi Abner now has a new morning routine.

“I get up, come to my kitchen and fill a glass of water to see what color and how long it’s going to take before it clears up,” she said.

She’s been doing this for the past two weeks since her tap water went dry.

On July 21, an air pocket and broken valve forced a water outage for customers with the Public Water Supply District #1 of Daviess County. The water was restored four days later with a water boil advisory. Now, they are forced to either boil their water or drink bottled water.

“It doesn’t look right and I don’t trust it to be in my children’s mouth,” said Gina Rabb, a water customer and mother of two.

Abner and Rabb reached out to 41 Action News in an effort to get answers from the water district. The women said they were “frustrated with a lack of communication” because they were never told of the boil advisory.

“I understand things break, I do. My concern is the lack of communication,” she said. “I didn’t get a phone call, no email, nothing in the mail.”

41 Action News spoke with Mike Emerson, the president of the Public District Supply #1 water board, to get these customers answers.

“No it’s not dangerous. I mean I drink the water and I’m not dead,” he said. “People ought to have some common sense. That is just settlement in the bottom.”

And to be sure, he said the water district sent samples to Jefferson City on Wednesday to be tested. As for the boil advisory notice, he said they put information on Facebook, sent information to local radio stations but did not put a notice in customers’ mailboxes because it would take too long.

“Our mail goes all the way to Kansas City before it gets out there. It can waste a week before our mail to come back here and it could be done by then,” said Emerson.

Abner and Rabb disagree. They think the water district should and could communicate better.

“They have all of our information – our addresses, our phone numbers. There should be another way to communicate with us,” said Abner.