PARKSVILLE — Residents on Lily Pond Road were without water for nearly two weeks this month, receiving a boil water notice before service was restored — despite, as one homeowner put it, “you can’t boil what we don’t have.”

Water service was restored Wednesday after an outage that lasted 12 days and affected a small cluster of homes connected to the Village of Liberty water system. The disruption follows a similar two-week outage last summer and shorter interruptions in between.

In a statement, Village of Liberty Mayor Joan Stoddard said the outage was caused by a pump failure and noted that the affected homes are outside the village’s primary water district. Stoddard added that residents have the option of pursuing alternatives, such as private wells or the potential creation of a separate water district, though no formal plan has been established.

Nick Prague, a Lily Pond Road resident affected by the outage, said that was the first time he had heard of such an idea.

“Prior to that message on Facebook two days ago, none of us were ever told that,” he said,

Town of Liberty Supervisor Frank DeMayo said the concept of forming a new water district was news to him as well and explained that such a project is unfeasible for just a handful of homes.

“That… is probably not a viable option because it would be extremely expensive,” DeMayo said. “It would be hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

Prague, who has lived in the area for more than a decade, said the problems are relatively recent.

“For the first nine years, we had no trouble,” Prague said, “This is new as of like two years ago.”

Since then, Prague said outages have become more frequent.

“We just got water back yesterday after 12 days,” he said, “Last July, we had no water for two weeks.”

Prague said that when outages occur, residents are often told the issue is within their homes.

“Anytime we call the water department, we were told everything is fine—you need to call a plumber,” he said. “If I have a plumbing problem, my other seven neighbors will still have water, right?”

After hiring a plumber during a previous outage, Prague said the issue appeared to be in the system itself.

“My plumber showed village water personnel that the main was dry,” he said.

Judy Freestone, who moved to the area in 2013, described a similar pattern, with problems emerging over the past year after years of reliable service.

“Last spring… we didn’t have water for like nine days,” Freestone said, “Then a couple months after that, we didn’t have water for a day or so. And then this particular time it was 12 days.”

She said daily life without water quickly becomes unmanageable.

“You can’t do anything—you can’t clean, you can’t do laundry, you can’t shower, and most importantly, you can’t flush the toilet,” Freestone said, “I go to my children’s houses with 10 empty gallon jugs and fill it up… so I can brush my teeth or flush the toilet.”

Residents said they were often left without clear answers during outages.

“They tell us to get a plumber… and they just keep giving us the responsibility of somebody else,” Freestone said.

DeMayo said the homes are considered out-of-district users of the village water system, limiting what the town can do to intervene directly.

“There’s really not a whole lot that the town can do,” he said.

Residents said they appreciated DeMayo’s attention to the issue and his efforts to help where possible, even with his limitations.

Freestone said that when residents previously raised concerns at village meetings, they were told the issue fell outside village responsibility.

“They said it’s not our responsibility—you’re outside of the village,” she said.

At the same time, residents say they have been paying for water service for years.

Prague said he has been billed by the village since purchasing his home, and neighbors report similar long-term arrangements.

“All I did was call the village, they gave me an account number and started taking my money,” he said.

Residents also questioned whether adequate emergency support was provided. Prague said he was told a water truck had been deployed during the outage, but said, “We never saw the truck.”

For residents like Freestone, the experience has been both disruptive and discouraging.

“It was very depressing,” she said. “You’re sitting here waiting for something to happen—and nothing happens.”

Residents said they plan to meet in the coming days to discuss possible next steps, including whether to pursue further action to address the recurring outages.