In late August 1995, Eastwood Manor residents gathered at Hilltop Elementary School in McHenry to talk about their water quality, including iron in the water, and how to force their water provider to make it better.

At the time, the water company’s owner said the system had been like that for 40 years. It was platted Aug. 15, 1955, according to McHenry County planning and zoning documents.

Lawsuits against Eastwood Manor Water Co. ensued, and the parent company later declared bankruptcy. Now, 30 years later, with a new owner of the private water system, residents of the subdivision on the northwest corner of Route 120 and Chapel Hill Road outside McHenry finally have water that runs clear and not red-orange.

“I noticed immediately,” resident Lori Burrey said of the change. “It is still coming out clear in the faucet.”

After a $1.7 million upgrade by private utility provider Aqua Illinois, Burrey and other neighbors said they can now drink and cook with the water coming from their taps.

Aqua Illinois bought the beleaguered system in 2016. On the afternoon of Aug. 8, after about three months of work at the subdivision’s water plant, the company switched from a temporary connection to McHenry city water and back to its wells.

“The water treatment plant improvements include building renovations, chemical feed equipment replacements and the installation of an iron filtration system to improve water quality for our customers,” according to a prepared release from the utility company.

Burrey has lived in the subdivision since 2001. Over that time, she’s purchased untold numbers of bottled water for cooking and drinking.

“We buy water every week, and for a long time, we had a water service where bottles were delivered,” Burrey said.

Stephanie Tesmer and her husband, Chris, moved into their Eastwood Manor home in October 2021. She began agitating the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency and Aqua management to fix the iron issue “a year and three months later.”

“I was tired of seeing complaints on Facebook,” Tesmer said. “People love to complain and not actually do anything about it.”

Mike Clark said he heard a lot of apathy about the water problems from longtime residents of the subdivision since he and wife Laura bought their house there in January 2022.

“The people who owned the water before Aqua ... would forget to bill you” so residents would go a few months without paying any bills, Clark said, adding that residents would let the problems slide in return.

Had the couple known about the high levels iron in their water, they never would have bought a house there, Mike Clark said. His wife, he said, “would fight with Aqua all of the time. She followed Stephanie and called at every turn, even testifying” at a Illinois Commerce Commission-hosted public hearing in July 2024, when Aqua sought a rate increase from the agency.

The Clarks ended up putting in a whole-house filter, a water softener and a reverse osmosis system to clear the water for cooking and drinking.

Even before installing the iron filters, Aqua Illinois said it has worked to get the iron out. When the company purchased the water system, iron concentrations there were as high as 16 milligrams per liter, according to the Illinois EPA.

“It was always testing at 2.3 [milligrams per liter], across the board,” Tesmer said, adding that the actual EPA limit is less than 1 milligram per liter.

Because fewer than 1,000 people were on the system, the EPA could not enforce that limit, she said.

According to the Illinois Department of Public Health, iron is not hazardous to drink, but “as little as 0.3 [milligrams per liter] can cause water to turn a reddish-brown color.”

It also can stain clothes, appliances and hair, Mike Clark said.

“I have gray hair. I have to use a special shampoo because my hair turned orange. It was like the circus was in town,” he said.

With the rust came a lot of sediment. The Tesmers, Clarks and Burreys all said they had to flush their hot water heaters a few times a year – or completely replace them – because of the sediment that came with the rusty water.

“High-iron water with sediment ruins everyone’s appliances,” Mike Clark said, adding that he likely will have to replace his six-year-old water heater soon.

“It is already clanking. That is with draining it twice a year,” Mike Clark said.

Their home didn’t have a washer and dryer when they bought it because the previous owners did all of their laundry at a laundromat, Burrey said, adding: “We added a laundry, but a lot of clothes got ruined.”

Burrey also gave up on using her dishwasher 20 years ago because of the level of iron in the water. With red water no longer coming out of her pipes, she’s now considering buying a new one.