Woods water problems explained

In mid-October, finding a place to take a shower was not just walking down the hall to the nearest restroom for some students. The water to Maplewood, Oakwood, and Elmwood was temporarily cut off for two days.

Students were forced to use all other available bathroom facilities on campus. The restrooms in the University Commons, Roselawn, and Hillside were used as an emergency back-up for students as they had to walk back and forth across campus whenever they had to do anything dealing with personal hygiene. Kate Stewart, a resident of Maplewood, described the situation: "I felt like me having to take a shower in a different building put me in an embarrassing and tedious situation."

Washing clothes was another issue as students had to haul their dirty clothes hampers across campus only to find that all the other washers and dryers were being used. "I walked to Hillside and every time all of the washing machines were being used, so after the third time I thought I would just suck it up and wait until the water got cut back on" said Marcel Long a member of the EMU men's track team.

The water shortage was caused by a leak in a three inch copper line found in Elmwood. The physical plant had recently admitted to knowing about this problem, temporarily patching the leak a month before. "We thought we could just patch the leak and it would hold until fall break," said Lewis Driver, EMU's head plumber. This costly mistake caused flooding in the basement of Elmwood, prompting the EMU physical plant staff to cut the water off to all surrounding dorms.

The leak was discovered as students were washing clothes in the basement of Elmwood. Students living in Elmwood found the pipe supplying water throughout the dorm with a massive leak. "I noticed water was coming from underneath the door by the laundry room, so I opened the door to find a pipe spraying water everywhere," said sophomore Kristina Zaccaria.

Zaccaria then reported the incident to her Community Advisor. While physical plant staff searched for an alternative solution to permanently fix the problem, students were left looking for an explanation as well as water.

"I thought the problem was understandable and would be fixed by the day's end but found two days later, the problem still wasn't fixed," said Nate Byler, a resident of Maplewood. Some of the EMU men's basketball players tried to make the best of the situation. "We were already in the Commons for practice, so I thought it would be more convenient and less time consuming to take a shower and go to class straight from practice. I'm pretty sure some of the guys will agree with me," said Corey Bailey, a sophomore on the men's basketball team.

Others were not as optimistic. Marc Yoder explained that "waking up in the middle of the night and having to use the restroom was different because I had to get up and get ready to walk across campus. By the time I got there, I felt as if I didn't have to use the bathroom anymore."

Some of the students say that they felt like they weren't properly informed of why there was no water.

After two long days of developing a plan to fix the leak, the physical plant thought the best solution was for Driver to call Martin Brunk, a local plumbing company, to come and install a new fitting for the pipe. It took three hours for Martin Brunk to fix the problem. Since the dorms are all original buildings, "the leak was just one of those things that came with the aging of the building," said Driver.

To prevent further situations from escalating to this magnitude, Driver has assured the reporter that there will be routine checks of all pipe work on campus and guaranteed that a problem like this will not occur again.