By Matt Gleckman

This weekend, Cortez residents were given a valid excuse, for once, not to do their dishes.

A large break in one of the city’s water mains occurred to the southeast of the abandoned Kmart building sometime Saturday afternoon — leaving most of the town with low pressure and dirty water.

"We didn’t see the effects until Sunday morning," said Pete Montano, owner of Francisca’s Restaurant on Main Street.

"The restaurant didn’t have any water at all Sunday morning and it is still cloudy today," Montano said. "There are also tenants who live upstairs from the restaurant and they were also without water. They had to run to City Market to get some," he said.

Bruce Smart, the director of Public Works for Cortez, said that while the water is not considered unsafe, the city does not suggest drinking it. "We do not have a mandatory boil situation [a situation where residents are advised to boil their water before consumption] but more of a sediment issue," Smart said.

"Over time, sediment will settle to the bottom of [water] tanks and pipes and when a break like this occurs, it starts pulling the sediment into residents’ lines," Smart said. "Usually we flush out the lines every so often, but we haven’t had a chance to yet this year."

Public Works crews were out in large numbers Monday afternoon searching for mud pockets and checking areas reported by residents, as well as locating and flushing out exceptionally dirty water lines.

"We will continue to flush several million gallons of water through the lines until the water clears up," Smart said. "However, some of the dirty water will still end up flowing through people’s taps."

Smart estimated that the majority of the water would be cleared sometime Monday afternoon.

Smart said that the break was caused by two or three spots of corrosion along the 10-inch pipe which serves the south side of the town.

"The break started as a small hole, and once the water started to rush through it, the hole grew quickly," said Smart.

Roughly 4 million gallons of water were lost before workers were able to isolate the break at 10 a.m. Sunday.

"I have heard that some people living at the higher elevations in town, such as those on Market Street and Montezuma Avenue, lost their water altogether while the rest just received low pressure," Smart said.

Homes were returned to full pressure over the course of Sunday night and Monday morning when the water plant increased the amount of water flowing through the lines.

"We are trying to get things back to normal just as quickly as we can," said Smart. "We always try to do the best we can to maintain the system, but you can’t avoid every problem."