Olympic View Elementary school received thousands of bottles of water Monday.

Staff and students needed the drinking water because a sewer problem shut down running water throughout most of the school located on Regatta Drive.

School officials noticed the problem Friday afternoon when the toilets and floor drains started backing up. Once school was dismissed for the day, employees spent the weekend searching for the cause.

Maintenance workers spent the weekend working on the problem. When it appeared that running water wouldn’t be restored in time for classes Monday morning, officials took steps to provide temporary facilities for staff and students.

Joe Hunt, spokesman for the Oak Harbor School District, said 10 portable toilets and portable hand-washing stations were delivered to the elementary school in time for class Monday and a hand sanitizer was placed in each classroom. The school district brought in enough bottled water to provide two bottles a day for students until the pipe is fixed.

In addition to most of the classes being without running water, the kitchen at the school is out of commission. The kitchen at Olympic View Elementary also prepares food for Hillcrest and Oak Harbor elementary schools. Hunt said Oak Harbor High School stepped in to prepare breakfasts and lunches for those schools in addition to preparing meals for high school students.

Workers started cutting through the concrete at the covered play area Saturday to find the problem pipe. Rescue Rooter, a Kent-based company, came to help fix the problem. Six custodians also spent the weekend cleaning up the backup that seeped from toilets and floor drains.

It turned out rocks in the sewer pipe had caused the blockage.

“How they got into the pipes, we don’t know,” Operations Director Bruce Worley said during a Monday evening school board meeting.

Workers were able to flush the pipe to clear the rocks. They restored water to most of the school Monday afternoon. Workers are installing some new pipe, which was complete by the end of the day Tuesday.

“It was an excellent effort to keep the school open,” Worley said.

He didn’t yet know how much the repair work will cost the school district. He said most of the costs stem from the extra hours maintenance employees worked over the weekend. He estimated the bill for all the work will be in the $5,000 range.