Dixmoor and Cook County officials said Saturday that a boil order was still in effect in the south suburban village that has gone without running water for a week — but they maintained progress was being made.

       No one could give a timeframe on when the problem attributed to the water main in Harvey, which supplies water to Dixmoor, would be diagnosed and fixed. That means for the time being, more than 3,000 residents will have to make do with bottled water.

       “I can’t tell you how long it’s going to take, but there is light at the end of the tunnel,” said Bill Barnes, executive director at the Cook County Emergency Management and Regional Security, said a news conference.

       A day earlier, Dixmoor Village President Fitzgerald Roberts announced that officials identified a problematic valve on Wood Street as a possible reason for the lack of reliable running water. Roberts gave an update Saturday saying that workers are drilling toward the faulty pipe and an engineer was going to use a camera to locate where the issue is.

       That gate valve is about 100 years old, Roberts said, meaning extra caution is needed to ensure it doesn’t break when it turns back on.

       “It’s just like anything else when you reach 100 years old,” Roberts said. “If you live to reach 100 years old, you will break down.”

       However, when questioned about why the troubled water system in Dixmoor and beyond was not addressed sooner, authorities said it was wrong to assign blame. Cook County Commissioner Deborah Sims, a Democrat from Posen, said she’s known for decades the pipes are leaking water but “we can’t just go out and just dig up the street” to fix them.

       “It’s nobody’s fault,” Sims said. “These things are bound to happen.”

       Roberts added that “it’ll take a lot to fix all the pipes here in town” because it is hard to find holes until the leaks begin and “it blows up through the ground.”

       However, there was recent ground gained in upping the system’s water pressure. Roberts said as of Saturday, the village was at 17 pounds of pressure after temporarily rerouting water from Blue Island. That isn’t enough to reach the ideal 35 pounds of pressure, but Roberts said, “the issue at hand is being resolved as I speak.”

       Meanwhile, Dixmoor residents left without a reliable water source have expressed dismay since Oct. 16, when the town’s water supply was first affected. Bottled water is available at Village Hall and seniors can call the village at 708-389-6121 for water delivery.

       ayin@chicagotribune.com

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