Hundreds of homes and businesses were left with no water over the weekend, when a water main on the eastern side of Queen Elizabeth Park broke.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
McKellars Park resident Lauren Carolan woke on Sunday morning to find she had no water what so ever.
"We essentially had no water for 2 days, and didn't get it back until around 4pm on Monday and then had to run all the taps for another two hours before we could use the water," she said.
Ms Carolan said that no one had gotten in touch with her to let them know the reason for the lack of water.
READ MORE: Erik Christensen celebrates 90 years of life
"We ran into a neighbour who had heard from another neighbour who had heard from a Facebook group that there was a burst [water] main," she said.
"They [council] didn't talk to us at all and didn't seem to care.
"Council just needs to let us know what is going on in a timely manner, obviously issues happen from time to time but it is just awful not knowing what's going on or having any indication of when things are likely to get better."
Lithgow's water and waste water director Daniel Buckens said that the scale of the break was unexpected.
"This break is probably the one that has affected the most people, with the repair being extremely complex," he said.
"It was also made worse by weather conditions on the Sunday with the rainfall and potential for electrical storms passing through, so it made side access to the main difficult."
According to Mr Buckens the council was made aware of the break at 6.30am on Sunday and it took until 2.30pm Monday to complete the repair.
"It just looks like it was a pipe failure, it's not based on the age of the system, and it was something that we couldn't prepare for.
"People speak about our ageing infrastructure but this pipe wasn't part of that section, it was part of a newer section installed in the 1980's with considerable service life left," he said.
While you're with us, you can now receive updates straight to your inbox from the Lithgow Mercury. To make sure you're up to date with all the news, sign up here.