Curious about a flight this past Thursday. ~3.5 hour flight, delayed due to incoming aircraft, A-319.

Boarded plane, pilot came on and awkwardly described that the flush didn't work on any of the toilets, and no water to wash hands (and there would be no coffee service - here, he inserted a joke about how maybe this was a good thing). The pilot suggested that anyone who had a problem with this should exit the aircraft and get rebooked. The crew provided bottles of water (manual flush?) and hand sanitizer in the lavatories.

Question:
Are they allowed to operate without working lavatories? I contacted 1kvoice, and they said that "United would not operate a flight with all lavatories being inoperable." Funny, since they had just done so. I was given ~12k miles in response. Appropriate?

As a side note, I am amazed they didn't alert us of this issue before we boarded.

Thoughts?
cORD