Restaurants may be feeling the biggest impact, like Squid Lips, which stayed open Friday night. Not being able to use the city’s water is tough on just about everybody.
That’s just one of the costs of keeping a restaurant in business when you have to boil the water before drinking it. Dishes have to be hand-washed and dried now, too. The city’s not only asking people to boil water before drinking or cooking with it; it’s asking people to flush less, bathe less and launder less. You can’t even brush your teeth normally.
"I’ve got a 4-year-old and you have to use bottled water to rinse his mouth because he may accidentally swallow some and you don’t want him to get sick," homeowner Eric Sprauer said.
But it’s one thing to have to change your habits, and quite another to see the small businesses that employ the city’s workers get hit.