SAN ANTONIO — Ronnie Simmons says his family has been without water for 10 days now, but he says he’s not the only one.
“There’s a number of individuals in this area and in the community on wells that are in the same boat as us,” Simmons said.
Simmons lives in Rustic Oak, a pretty rural area. His home like many others on this side of the county rely on well water.
During last weeks winter storm Simmons says his pipes burst and his well's booster pump stopped working.
“The problem is certain plumbers will not work inside of the well house,” Simmons said.
The only other person in his area that works on water well systems is completely overwhelmed servicing other customers. So, for Simmons and his wife this has become their new reality.
“We’ve got a couple of bins in the house. One for drinking water, one for washing hands. Flushing toilets is always interesting because you have to put the water in for that, but that’s what you do when you have no water,” Simmons said.
BJ Bealor is a San Antonio plumbing inspector and says it’s going to be hard finding someone qualified to work on wells.
“Plumbers are incredibly busy right now. It’s a staffing thing, they don’t have enough people to keep up with everything,” Bealor said.
Bealor says the best thing people in Simmons situation can do is continue calling around to get on any waiting lists they can find, and ultimately just wait it out.
“As long as our neighbor has generously offered to make sure we’re okay, we’ll be fine. But it would be nice to know that help is on the way,” Simmons said.