McAdam residents are still cautiously using their water even after the village ended a two-month-long conservation order.

The village asked everyone in the community, including its major employer, a wallboard manufacturing plant, to reduce their water use in the summer.

The order was imposed after one of the village's four wells was contaminated with high levels of manganese and another had extremely low water levels.

The village discovered the problem in June when one well was not refilling quickly. That well has been fixed.

The other well that had high levels of manganese remains shutdown until further tests come in.

McAdam residents have been conserving their water for several months. (CBC)

McAdam Mayor Frank Carroll said the water restrictions over the summer months have had a surprising result.

“I believe those strategies showed folks that they could get by without using as much water and as a result we got less water being used in the village,” he said.

He said the village is consuming 53,000 gallons every 24 hours, which is down from 80,000 gallons before the problems started.

"People just seem to have caught onto maintaining that level, not only saving dollars in the cost of water ... but also people like the methods they are using to reduce their water consumption," he said.

People in the southwestern village are able to use as much water as they need. The mayor said the village will know in the next few weeks whether the fourth well will be pumping again.

Verity Gridly, a long-time resident of McAdam, said she did her best to conserve water over the summer.

Gridly said she found innovative ways to reduce her water use.

"We used the lake water and we put out buckets and we collected rainwater,” she said.

She also said village residents made sure others were respecting the conservation order.

“All the neighbours watched each other and if anybody drove by and saw you watering your flowers you were told to stop,” she said.

“People were spying on each other to make sure you weren’t watering their flowers.”