Water was shut off in Loeb Hall due to emergency city repairs from 10:00 p.m. on Nov. 19 to around 10:00 a.m. on Nov. 20. It was then shut off from 10:00 p.m. on Nov. 20 to 6:00 a.m. on Nov. 21. 

The water issues affected the whole block, Vice President of University Communications Amy Malsin said in a statement. It was due to emergency repairs by the New York City Department of Environmental Protection. The city was unable to finish on Wednesday night. 

A notice was placed in the lobby of Loeb displaying information on a routine water shut-off to take place on the 19th. The water shut-off was supposed to last from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., but the water did not turn on for residents until a little after 1 p.m. on the 20th, and when it did, the water came out brown. 

“We couldn’t shower this morning. We had a late class at 12, and we woke up at 10, and the water still wasn’t running, and it was a disappointment,” Kaya Greer said, a first-year integrated design major at Parsons School of Design. “And now it’s supposed to shut off again.”

Residents of Loeb received an email on Thursday from the Residence Hall office explaining that while water had been successfully restored to the building, air was still trapped in parts of the system, preventing it from flowing normally to specific units. 

Residents were instructed to run their faucets for a short period to allow the trapped air to escape.

Residential Advisor Sandra Pomelo-Fowler said that it was fairly common for the city to shut off water, and that it doesn’t come back on exactly when they say it will. 

“The issue was that we expected water to be back around six, or I expected it to be back maybe within an hour or two of that, because I knew it wouldn’t probably be right at six. But one was tough,” she said.

When the water turned on, it was brown, but Pomeleo-Fowler said it disappeared quickly. 

“That happened when I was finally able to take a shower this afternoon. I just had to, like, let it run for like, 30 seconds until the water runs clear,” she said. 

To prepare for the water outage on the 20th, residents stored water in containers and water bottles. 

“We’ve just been like, keeping our water in bottles and stuff and just, like, putting water in our kettle, just to keep it there, literally brushing our teeth with water bottles,” first-year BAFA Journalism + Design major at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts and fine arts major at Parsons School of Design Libia Buth said.