Two Velarde schools recently found out what it would be like if the buildings did not have water.
On Feb. 24, both Velarde Elementary School and Velarde Head Start went without water for an afternoon. Head Start Director Martha Fresquez said students were released a little before noon, at the time the water was shut off.
At Velarde Elementary, Principal Wilfredo Aguilar said the students were not released and school went on as normal.
“When we got word the water would not be back on, there was only an hour left of school,” Aguilar said. “It was not an all day thing. It happened shortly before noon and the kids were fine. There’s just a few whiners.”
Aguilar said he had submitted a work order to the Española School District Maintenance Department a week prior to the incident, to fix a water leak in the nurse’s office. When the district plumber arrived at the school Monday morning, Aguilar was not expecting him.
“I had no prior notice,” Aguilar said.
In a Feb. 25 interview, Superintendent Danny Trujillo said when the plumber began work on the leak, he accidentally broke off a valve.
“What I heard was maybe it (repairing the leak) took a couple of hours, max,” Trujillo said.
When the plumber broke the valve, he had to request that the water be shut off, he said. The plumber then had to drive into Española to get the right part. The first time, he purchased the wrong part, so he had to go back into town. The process of going back and forth took more time, he said.
“It was a small amount of time,” Trujillo said.
For the children attending school for more than three hours without water, using the restroom in a sanitary manner arose. More than 100 children ate lunch, drank milk and were left with the obstacle of using the restroom without running water or a backup supply of water to flush the toilets manually. However, each toilet had water in it when the water was shut off, Trujillo said. Thus, each toilet had one flush.
“There’s not just one toilet at the school. There’s more than one, right? And they (each toilet) all had one flush,” Trujillo said.
However, the superintendent said the best practice in this circumstance was to not flush.
“It was nothing. We just told them (students) they can’t use the restroom until the water is back on,” Trujillo said.
The leak was fixed after school was let out Feb. 25 and the next day, both Velarde Elementary and Head Start had running water.