By Vernon Robison

Moapa Valley Progress

Grant Bowler Elementary school was without water for most of the school day on Friday due to a break in the main water pipeline into the school.

Construction crews that arrived at the school before 6:00 a.m. to continue work on the final details in the school’s recent major rehabilitation were the first to notice the waterline break. The crew immediately went to work to fix the broken line.

“We saw the problem as soon as we came on site,” said Gary Ondrisco, project superintendent for the contractor Big Town Mechanical. “We reacted as quickly as we possibly could.”

At first, the crews were worried that the break had been caused, in some way, by the rehab project they had been working on, Ondrisco said. But as the crew began focusing on the problem, it became clear that the break was in an entirely different area than where they had been working, he said.

According to Bowler principal Shawna Jessen, Clark County School District officials in Las Vegas were notified of the situation right after the break was discovered. Water was then trucked into the school for students use during the day. The water arrived in time for school to start at 9:00 a.m., Jessen said.

“The school district has a plan in place for when these types of things happen,” Jessen said. “I think that things went as well as could be expected, according to that plan.”

Cooled drinking water dispensers were set up around the school for student use. While water was not being rationed per se, students were being encouraged to conserve the drinking water throughout the day.

In addition, special waterless hand washing stations were also provided in the school cafeteria and at the restrooms in the school.

In the morning, the school received a call from a Southern Nevada Health District official, Jessen said.

“They were mainly concerned that we were following sanitary procedures in serving lunch,” Jessen said.

Jessen explained that school lunches are no longer prepared in the school kitchen but are brought, ready-prepared from a central district kitchen.

“Once they (SNHD) knew that we were fully following the school district contingency plans that had been set up for this situation, they didn’t have any problems with it,” Jessen said.

More of an issue, though, was the problem of being able to flush toilets. For much of the day, this was managed by school custodians carting water into the restrooms and manually flushing the toilets, Jessen said.

But as the day wore on, the scope of this task became more and more unmanageable, she said. In the afternoon, some classes were marched, one by one, to use the restrooms at the nearby fairgrounds.

Some parents were alarmed when they learned that their children had spent the day in the school with no running water.

“I just wish that I had gotten a phone call or something,” said one parent who asked not to be identified. “If I’d known that there was no water at the school I would have come and picked them up and brought them home today.”

Many criticized the school administration for continuing the school day and not sending kids home.

But Jessen said that it is an extremely complex matter to shut down a school after the day has begun.

“A lot of these kids have no one at home that could come and get them,” Jessen said. “Putting them on a bus and sending them back home alone would not be a good solution. In those situations I think they are safer here.”

Jessen emphasized that decisions in these situations aren’t made just on the spur of the moment.

“We take it very seriously,” she said. “The CCSD has a procedure in place for such events. We make sure that we are in compliance with that. We didn’t need to shut the school.”

Work crews had the waterline break repaired and water was restored to the school by 2:00 p.m.

“I’m so grateful that our contractors were still on site when this happened,” Jessen said. “They have been great to work with. They were able to get right to work on the problem and we didn’t have to wait for district crews to be sent out from Las Vegas.”