Friday the 13th was a lucky day this June for the southwest Iowa city of Avoca, pop. 1,700. Restaurants along Main Street had their best week since problems with the city’s water supply began.
“It was the first time we hit our standard Friday mark in weeks,” Andrea Radd, owner of Raddberry’s Bakery and Cafe, told Little Village. “It was a big relief. Business had been picking up all week — not back to where we were prior, but pretty good.”
The Regional Water Rural Water Association (RWRWA), a nonprofit utility headquartered in Avoca that provides water to communities in parts of five southwest Iowa counties, issued a boil water advisory and declared a Level Red water conservation emergency on May 11. The four-year-long drought that affected most of Iowa ended last spring, but drought conditions have persisted in the state’s southwest, straining rural water systems…