MISQUAH — The annual hydrant flushing ended two weeks ago, but the brown-water calls to City Clerk Donna Skoglund have not, reaching eleven as of Tuesday — eight more than she predicted, and, she notes, “every single one of them from a house where I already explained it. In writing. Mailed. With a stamp the city paid for.”

The flushing, which the public works crew runs each June to clear sediment from the water mains, briefly tints the tap water a rusty brown; the water is safe to drink, the discoloration harmless, and the remedy unchanged for as long as there have been hydrants: run the cold tap a few minutes and wait for it to clear. Skoglund had this explained on a printed card and mailed to every household in town before the flushing began, anticipating exactly the calls she is now getting. The card, she reports, has not helped, “and may, if anything, have reminded people that brown water was a thing that could happen to them.”

“People would rather call,” she said, with the settled calm of a woman in her thirty-first year as clerk, a tenure that has taught her precisely which battles are winnable. “I think they want to be told by a person, not a card. They want to hear a human voice say it’s fine. And you know what, I can do that. It’s most of the job, actually — telling people in a calm voice that the thing they’re worried about is fine. I’ve made my peace with it. Mostly. I make my peace with it again every June.” She has begun keeping a tally on the same legal pad she uses for the council minutes, “so that next June, when I stand up and say to expect about eleven of these, I can point to the year I was right, and nobody will remember, and they’ll call anyway.”