A Sandwich Road daycare was without water for three days last week after unanticipated problems during water main work prolonged a scheduled water shut-off.

Water servicing Wareham Child Care was shut off on Wednesday, Dec. 15, and could not be turned back on by crews until the following Friday morning.

Carol Couture, executive director of the center, said parents had to make other arrangements for their children, and those who couldn't make other arrangements had to stay home from work, because the daycare couldn't operate without water.

"Some [parents] had to come in and get notices from us, because their jobs didn't believe them," Couture said.

Staff still reported to work, however.

"It's been very difficult," Couture said Thursday. "Sometimes we'd go to leave and there'd be big holes in the road."

Michael Martin, Water Department Superintendent for the Wareham Fire District, said that the outage was caused because the district has been completing routine water main work in the Sandwich Road area in conjunction with the ongoing sewer project in the Oakdale neighborhood.

"Unfortunately, [the work] took a little longer than we thought," Martin said of last week's maintenance, adding that he understands what an inconvenience it was for the daycare. "They rely on [water]. They depend on it."

Because Sandwich Road is a state highway, the state regulates how and when work can be performed, Martin said.

"The amount of work that would normally take one to one-and-a-half days took three days," Martin said.

Due to the time of year and the concern for the possibility of winter weather conditions, district employees could only work between the hours of 9 a.m. and 2 p.m., as permitted by the state, Martin said.

"After Thanksgiving, [the state gets] really nervous about having excavations out on their roadways because of the potential for snow," Martin said.

In conjunction with the limited working hours, workers had to stop work on the pipes, fill in trenches, and pave each day during the scheduled maintenance, due to the possibility of winter weather.

"Normally, we do the paving on one day," Martin explained.

And then workers ran into problems.

"Sometimes [work] goes smoother and better than we think, and sometimes it doesn't go as well as we'd hoped," Martin said. "It's not a result of incompetence or being inconsiderate, it's just the nature of that kind of work."

The result was that the daycare was without water for longer than the Water District had predicted, Martin said.

"These things happen as part of the general construction process," Martin said. "We're sorry."

Couture reported, with relief, that the daycare could operate as usual as of Friday morning.