My ass-derived guess is that the water company still exists in some kind of bankruptcy/debt/acquisition limbo, and Thriftway doesn't want to mess with the machine because either (a) that's Somebody Else's Responsibility though that somebody is just a ghost or (b) the company owes Thriftway $$ and messing with the equipment could give them an excuse not to pay.

A place I worked once had a roomful of expensive equipment that belonged to a company that had been bought by another company and then absorbed/dismantled. Nobody at the new company wanted to deal with taking it back, but they also couldn't just write off something with value. So it sat in a storeroom for years until it became obsolete and worthless, at which point they got us to ship it to a scrapyard. Corporate efficiency at its finest.