One event that everyone will remember from summer 2017 was a water pipe leak that affected many people and was really interesting. It was not a long-term thing but it did shut off the water for a couple days.

The Emporia water pipe leak affected many people in Emporia. We were lucky to have people donate water to Emporia. People in Emporia did not have water and had to use gas to go get clean water for their use. This was a bad thing that happened this summer and I have some people that I interviewed to try to get their opinions. Here are the questions and answers:

One of the people that I asked was Cadence Butler. I asked her how the water pipe affected her and she said, “People couldn’t have things that took water, such as showers, sinks, and other things.” I also asked her what we can do to prevent another water pipe leak. She said, “We could have more ‘checkups’ on the water pipes and fix them better.” The final question I asked was how she thinks it affected other people in Emporia. Her answer was “It depends on the people’s locations. It was our main water pipe, and without it everything went haywire”.

The other person I asked was Arianna Hamilton. I also asked her how the water pipe affected her.  “We were going to pick up my stepmom’s mother and when we got back to town, we found out there was no water,” she said. I asked her how to prevent another water pipe leak again. “We could have more inspections and pay closer attention to the water pipes,” she said. “Some people have pets and their pets could not deal without water,” she said.

Some people were affected because of the waterpipe leak but some people did not get affected because they were not in Emporia. This event is something that stayed around for a while and not many people care anymore, but it was something that happened. Car washes around town were shut down because they could not use water. Almost any businesses that took water were not able to function properly.

Overall, the water pipe leak affected many people in Emporia, KS, but not all people. This event has died down in Emporia’s history and, nobody really talks about it anymore. This, unfortunately, could happen again if workers make more mistakes or if something breaks them from the outside. It was a really interesting thing to research and write about.