Fort Myers residents frustrated with constant water shortages

Turning on the faucet expecting a refreshing splash only to get nothing but dry disappointment is getting tiresome for some residents.

That’s what’s happening for people at the residences at Gateway and along Treeline Avenue in Fort Myers.

Some people are extremely frustrated. They said this has happened twice in the last six months, and they cannot get through to public works.

City crews are still at the scene after arriving on Wednesday morning to fix a water main that broke Tuesday night.

Councilman Liston Bochette told us this was a major water main break, and it’s causing people in a number of neighborhoods around Treeline Avenue to have to boil their water.

• READ MORE: Precautionary boil water notice issued for parts of Fort Myers

But for about 18 hours, neighbors down the street at the residences at Gateway didn’t even have enough water coming out to boil.

Meghan Yerien took us inside her home and showed us what happened when she turned on her sink and then her outside faucet. That water barely dribbled out.

“It’s very frustrating because we didn’t get told last night either. It was just we walked over, went to go fill a cup of water, and no water, and we have a 4-year-old, so like we had to go buy gallons of water,” Yerien said.

Wednesday afternoon, Yerien told us her water had come back on. Now, she has to boil it until the city gets back the test results to make sure the water is safe.

In the meantime, Bochette told us crews are installing new pipelines to make sure this never happens again.

“Break was rather major, so rather than putting a bandaid on it, under the state mandate, we’re going to fix it 100%. Once it’s repaired, it shouldn’t ever fail again,” said Bochette.

But Yerien and the other neighbors are skeptical, as this isn’t the first time there’s been a water main break around here.

Councilman Bochette told WINK News the earliest the notice could be lifted is Friday after test results come back.