Crews work overtime to fix pipes at Tampa school

Monday, April 20, 2009

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Hillsborough School District leaders say the problem will be fixed by Monday morning. Watch the story Watch Video

TAMPA (Bay News 9) -- Crews have been working overtime to get a problem with water pressure fixed at Clair Mel Elementary School in Tampa.

Crews say 50-year-old pipes created very low water pressure at the school last week. The water pressure was too low to flush the toilets and use the drinking fountains.

Students had to drink bottled water, use hand sanitizer and custodians were forced to pour buckets of water into the toilets in order to flush them for the students.

When parent Lilly Phillage found out about the situation she was upset.

"Oh my goodness, I was absolutely horrified," Phillage said.

Because of the water pressure issues, Phillage took her son, Patrick, out of class.

This weekend crews replaced most of the old pipes in order to fix the problem. According to the Hillsborough County School District, those lines were set to be replaced sometime this summer. But with a new classroom being built at the school, the pipes apparently became blocked with even more debris.

Still, the school district's manager of facilities says he never thought the situation would get as bad as it did.

"We have over 300 different sites that we maintain. And when you have 300 sites you're always going to have something that falls through the cracks and doesn't happen. This was very unfortunate," said Clay Ward, manager of facilities. "We're taking a hard look at it and other schools very much like it, and we're going to try very hard to make sure this doesn't happen again.

District leaders say the problem will be fixed by the time parents walk their children to school Monday morning.