BURLESON COUNTY, Texas (KRHD) — Residents in Cade Lakes, just outside Caldwell, are dealing with sudden water outages with no warning or notice.
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For more than 20 days, neighbors have turned on their faucets to find they have no water. Resident Andy Wilhelm said crews installing fiber optic internet lines keep hitting water lines, knocking out water service across the entire community.
"You can't live like this," Wilhelm said.
"Monday we didn't have no water. Tuesday we didn't have no water. Wednesday we didn't have no water for 12 hours," Wilhelm said.
When the water does come back, Wilhelm said he cannot trust it, pointing out black particles sticking to the side of a cup.
"Could you imagine you got 3 or 4 kids over here? And can't flush your commode. You can't wash your clothes. You can't feed these kids," Wilhelm said.
Project records point to Frontier Communications expanding fiber in the area. They use contractors, so 15 ABC called Housley Communications Group in Bryan. They said it is not them.
"We're doing a bunch of repairs from the same people that are hitting the water lines," a Housley Communications Group representative said.
15ABC called the City of Caldwell, who then pushed me over to the Water Utilities Department at Cade Lakes. They know it is happening but could not tell me who is responsible.
"I expect to send them a huge bill for breaking our water lines," a Water Utilities Department representative said.
The department provided the number of the general contractor installing the fiber optics.
"I ain't got nothing to say about that," the general contractor said.
At one job site in Cade Lakes, a supervisor with USIC said several crews are working on this project, including Michael's Underground, Oak Utilities and Milaskoch.
"You can't do nothing. You're just at the mercy of these people out here," Wilhelm said.
Right now, there are no clear answers, no accountability and no guarantee for people in Cade Lakes that their water will stay on. It is still unclear when these water lines will be fixed.
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