As Kris Faivre watched her washing machine fill with brown, murky water, her heart sank.
The resident of Pembroke, Massachusetts, knew it was too late to save the bundle of white towels she had just loaded into the machine.
“The water looked as dark as Coca-Cola,” she said. “Coca-Cola.”
A few miles from Faivre’s Kaijsa Nicinski shuddered as she recalled the time she took what she refers to as an “espresso shower.”
“We’ve got a brownstone shower floor, and I’m thinking, ‘My gosh, we didn’t get all the hair dye out of my hair.’ And then I realize I didn’t dye my hair, and that’s when it hit me: I’m covered in dark espresso-brown water.”
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Those are just two of the stories Pembroke residents recounted to the NBC10 Boston Investigators. Multiple homeowners said discolored water comes pouring from their taps, shower heads and faucets unexpectedly.
“You can’t have a bath because it’s brown. You can’t cook … because the water is brown. You basically can’t do anything,” Nicinski said.
The murky brown hue comes from naturally-occurring minerals like iron and manganese that have accumulated in the town’s decades-old wells and pipes. When the town performs its biannual flushing of the system, that sediment is kicked up and can flow into people’s homes.
The town sends online notifications telling residents when they may experience discolored water and advises them to run their taps until it clears.
For longtime residents like Faivre and Nicinski, discolored water is just part of life in Pembroke, but they said recently it keeps happening, repeatedly, and at times without warning.
“It’s gross. It’s disgusting. It’s costly,” said Faivre.
She said her water was discolored about 20 times last year.
Nicinski said she counted nearly a dozen “brown water events” at her home in 2024.
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“[The town] can say ‘You’ve got your biannual flushing.’ But the reality for the residents there is brown water events happening all the time,” she said.
Town leaders are aware residents are frustrated, and the water department is trying to get a handle on the problem.
“I think we’re still trying to get a feel for how often this is happening,” said Pembroke Water Department Superintendent Dan Sullivan. “It’s an aesthetic concern. It’s not a health concern.”
Sullivan said discolored water happens in cities and towns across Massachusetts. It is part of operating and maintaining an aging water system. He said the town does its best to notify residents of when it might happen, but he admits in some cases there is not time.
“The unexpected things, if we find out about it, we’ll try to notify you,” he said. “But at some point, when we find out, the situation has already happened.”
But residents said those notifications can sometimes contain inaccurate information.
Nicinski said she gets brown water in her home even when maintenance work is being done in another part of town.
“That’s great to send out a schedule, but it doesn’t mean anything when you’re impacted by everyone else’s schedule around you,” she said.
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Sullivan explained that when the town flushes the system, a change in water flow occurs. He said the flushing directions provided by engineers say people will experience discolored water outside of the zones being flushed.
“We’re trying to direct the flow to make it the most efficient operation as possible. And in doing so, that’s going to change the hydraulics of the system. Potentially sediment can get kicked up,” Sullivan said. “It’s all a network. It’s all intertwined.”
Other than flushing the system, Sullivan said discoloration can occur for several reasons.
Fire flow tests, which are conducted to determine what size pipes a facility needs to comply with the town’s fire code, can cause discoloration, he said. Water main breaks, routine maintenance work, and construction being done by private companies can also cause the water to turn brown.
To address the growing concern, the town recently created an online discolored water form.
Sullivan said, after a recent citywide fire flow test, a flood of reports came in. He said gathering the data this way will help the water department address the problem and hold contractors accountable.
Residents are also urged to sign up to receive official alerts and monitor the town’s social media pages.
“The public are basically our eyes on the system,” Sullivan said. “When people call and say they have discolored water, we know there’s something going on in that area. And we have successfully identified when certain contractors abuse things.”
Nicinski has compiled more than a year’s worth of data herself. She has been tracking reports of brown water and cross referencing them with maintenance notifications and other events that cause discoloration to get a sense of how often it’s happening to her neighbors.
She took the information directly to Sullivan and town select board members at a meeting last month, pleading with them to do something.
“This is alarming,” she said. “This cannot be the status quo. We deserve better than that.”
Sullivan said he understands residents are angry. He has dealt with brown water in his home, too.
During that same meeting in December, the town unveiled an ambitious $75 million plan to improve the water system and, in turn, address the discolored water issue.
But Sullivan said it is going to take several years for that plan to come to fruition. He told residents if they report an issue, the water department will investigate and address it, but he and town officials implored resident to come directly to them and not spout off about the problem on social media.
“We need to treat the sources. These aren’t things that can happen overnight,” he said. “It’s going to take time … and money. A lot of money.”
As for Faivre and Nicinski, they’re both keeping close tabs on their taps, and stocking up on bottled water.
“Brown water certainly doesn’t look good. I wouldn’t drink it. We don’t cook with it,” Faivre said. “Clean water is a basic necessity. We’re not getting that.”