BEAUMONT Tx. (KLFY) – Residents say it hasn’t rained Beaumont in two full days, but many of their streets remained covered by water.

And the water has been rising since Tuesday.

That’s when the army corps of engineers opened a dam to reduce pressure as water levels increased in the reservoir.

“The water just kept rising. We’ve been flooded ever since,” said Beaumont resident Debra Lewis.

To make matters worse, the entire city of Beaumont, almost 120,000 residents, lost access to clean water.

For now, the city is providing two cases of bottled water per household.

Beaumont resident Marva Parkerson said: “I was just here yesterday. And I come back today and, everybody was right there getting water yesterday to flush the toilets, come back today… I don’t know.”

Clifford Sias lives in the Drake Addition Subdivision.

He says in his 40 years here, he’s never seen flooding this bad, but he believes the army corps of engineers should have taken a different approach to relieving the dam.

“They should have opened the dams up during the rain and start slowly letting the water out of there. Don’t wait until it gets to the point of where it’s breaching the dam! They should’ve been releasing that water so it could have slowed went down, this here would’ve of happened. Right now I have to use a boat to get back there to my house,” Sias explained.

According to city administrators, residents will be without water until flooding recedes and officials can learn just how much damage was done.