DIXMOOR, Ill. (WLS) — Two south suburban schools will again be unable to open Tuesday due to a series of water main breaks.
Chopper 7 HD captured a video of crews working on repairs in Dixmoor on Monday afternoon.
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By Monday night, water was once again flowing through Dixmoor’s faucets, and the tiny community’s water tower is nearly full again, with nearly 20,000 gallons. But keeping it that way has been something like carrying water in a sieve.
“Since Friday, we’ve had five major breaks out here,” said Village President Fitzgerald Roberts.
Sunday’s water main break that closed Martin Luther King Elementary and Rosa Parks Middle School also left more than 1,000 families without water.
Another happened Monday morning off of West 147th Street.
Roberts recognizes it’s a serious problem, and the village is fixing it one patch at a time. And they’re having to scramble more frequently; the same thing happened at least twice in July.
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The infrastructure is old, likely more than 100 years old, and can’t keep up. Cook County and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will pitch in $2 million to the village for repair work that starts in October. For now, they’ll hope Monday’s patches will hold.
The schools, which make up two of Dixmoor’s three, will remain closed for testing by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency.
There is now also a boil water order — only in the affected areas of the break.
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