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'It reflects poorly on us' | Water outages in Manor cause local bar to lose thousands of dollars

The Whiskey Girls Saloon was forced to close down at a peak sales time two Thursdays in a row due to unforeseen water outages.

MANOR, Texas — Selena Chambers is a co-owner of The Whiskey Girls Saloon, a bar that's operated in Manor for just over two years.

A few weeks ago, Chambers got a call at around 10:30 p.m. – prime time for a Thursday night at the bar – that said the bar's water supply was completely out.

"I'm like, 'OK, I'll just be up there.' I'm freaking out because we have the water on autopay. Like, there's no billing issues or anything," Chambers said. 

As soon as Chambers started checking Facebook and seeing that the surrounding neighborhoods were also out of water, she realized there was a bigger problem. With no water for the bathrooms to operate, everyone had to leave the bar.

"It's just really hard because it's Thursday night, it's the beginning of a busy weekend," Chambers said. "It's one of our busiest days and I have a full house, and I have to say, 'Sorry we're closed,' and kick everybody out."

Exactly one week later, she got the same discouraging call: the bar had no water again. 

"Some people are getting mad at that point, like, ‘What are you all doing? What's going on with your water?’" Chambers said. "It reflects poorly on us, even though we can't do anything about it."

As the bar typically closes at 2 a.m., these early closures cost Chambers and her team thousands of dollars.

"My employees lose hours. That's tips that they're not making. It doesn't just hurt us as a business; it hurts my employees as well," Chambers said.

Because the bar didn't have water when it closed, staff wasn't even able to clean the dishes for the night.

"I have to come in extra early in the morning and hope that we have water so that I can clean," Chambers said.

Crossroads Utility Services, the water provider for the area, told Chambers the outages were due to a supply issue from its wholesale water provider, Metro H2O, and from residents not following water restrictions.

"I'm just, like, biting my nails every week, you know? Is it going to happen? Is it going to happen?" Chambers said. 

Now, she just wants answers and more communication. 

"I guess the biggest issue is like no notice," Chambers said. “If we had notice, like, I cancel things. I can warn customers ahead of time, ‘Hey, we have to close early tonight,’ instead of just like in the moment, like, ‘Sorry, everybody. We got to get out of here.’”

KVUE spoke with Crossroads Utility Services a few weeks ago and it responded the same way, saying the outages were due to an issue with its wholesale water provider and that it didn’t know when this issue would be completely resolved.

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