Nearly 500 Saint John Water customers have been under a boil water order as of Sunday night following a water main break. Unfortunately for customers, it makes something as simple as getting a glass of water significantly more complicated.

"It makes it a little bit challenging,” says Lily Lake Pavilion community programs coordinator, Deborah Lawton. “We have to kind of make sure that we're serving only the fresh bottled water, we have to bring in ice as well."

Lily Lake Pavilion is just one of many Saint John Water customers under a boil water order after city staff notified the restaurant just before the start of its scheduled Thanksgiving buffet.

“Fortunately, we had time to make those adjustments and make sure that we were in compliance with the boil water order," says Lawton.

The boil order has been issued to neighbourhoods near the area of Rockwood Park. The city says there was a break in an old cast iron water main on Hawthorne Avenue, which connects to the Rockwood Park storage tank.

"It's not new infrastructure, it's very old infrastructure that broke down on us and that's been repaired,” says Saint John councillor, John MacKenzie. “It was slated to be done, and it's going to be upgraded as soon as we can get to it, but right now it's repaired and working."

Mackenzie says this break is not related to the $216,000,000 Safe Clean Drinking Water Project undertaken by the city.

"Chipman Hill and Metcalf Street are good examples,” says MacKenzie. “That's not part of the Safe Clean Drinking Water Project, that's annual maintenance we do to upgrade the system – Hawthorne Avenue would be the same as that."

The city says its independent testing lab is closed for the holiday weekend; however, accommodations were made to accept the first sample from Saint John Water on Monday.

Meanwhile, residents will be notified by the city when the boil order is lifted and water is considered safe to drink – which will require two consecutive clean water results, received 24 hours apart.

"There's nothing we can do about it, so we just work around it,” says Lawton.

With files from CTV Atlantic’s Laura Lyall