by Megan Allison, originally posted on December 14, 2016

GOLD HILL, Ore. — Gold Hill’s water system will be turned off on Monday to replace shut off valves throughout the city. Residents will then be put under a boil advisory through Thursday.

Anna Fetty brought home a newborn grandson as these boil orders began. Now, she’s getting frustrated.

“At that point we were doing bottles. And to come home and to find out that we had to boil the water was just ridiculous,” Fetty said.

Fetty is having her whole family over for Christmas dinner, and plans to start cooking days in advance. But with a boil order, she worries her meal could be affected.

“It’s about 20 people. And this year we were gifted with a turkey and a ham and I’m making all the fixings to go with it. The cakes, the pies, the cookies,” she said.

Mary Slaton also lives in Gold Hill. She said she’s not comfortable giving faucet water to her dogs, let alone her family.

“It smells like bleach when it does run. When you can drink it, it still smells like bleach. And we’ve had to continuously get water from the store because you can’t drink bleach water,” Slaton said.

Slaton is used to being the host for family holidays. But she cooked Thanksgiving at her daughter’s this year, and plans to do the same for Christmas.

“She has a bigger place but she has good water also. So I don’t even want to cook anything here, I wanna cook it over there where I can just use the faucet water,” Slaton said.

Other residents said they planned to have relatives in town for Christmas, now they’re telling them not to make the trip.