As Austin residents wait for water from their taps to become drinkable, three City Council members tried and failed Friday to begin a push for information about what exactly happened to lead to a mandatory boil water notice and how a repeat can be avoided in the future.
Austin Water officials have said that weeks of rain, particularly upstream of Austin along the Llano River, caused an unprecedented natural disaster — water that was full of more silt than it had ever been and too difficult to treat quickly enough to keep pace with city usage. The city issued a precautionary boil order Monday, followed by a mandatory one Wednesday after water at one plant failed a test.
City officials said Friday they’re aiming to lift the boil notice on Sunday afternoon or evening. Austin Water leaders said Friday that the utility has restored most of its water supply.
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Council Member Ellen Troxclair posted a draft resolution on the council’s message board Thursday afternoon that asked city staffers to provide a briefing about the crisis to elected officials and the public within a month of whenever the boil order is lifted. Council Members Alison Alter and Leslie Pool quickly said they would co-sponsor the resolution.
However, the resolution failed to gain the fourth co-sponsor needed to add it to the agenda for next week’s council meeting.
Troxclair said she had questions about whether the problem could have been foreseen or if communications about it could have been better. She noted that city officials opted not to use a reverse-911 system to alert residents and pointed out that some restaurants reported being unaware the boil water order was in place until after they already had served water to customers.
“I’m sure there were reasons for those decisions, and hindsight is 20/20, but unless we take a minute and think about how we can improve, then we won’t be able to learn things,” Troxclair said. “It is completely appropriate for the City Council to be asking for that transparency and accountability.”
Council Members Ann Kitchen and Sabino “Pio” Renteria said in message board posts that they would prefer to wait a few weeks to ask city staffers to begin the process of looking back, noting that they may still be working on fallout from the crisis itself. The responses disappointed Troxclair, who said she thought a month was ample time to compile a briefing.
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Austin Water Director Greg Meszaros said during a news conference Friday that treatment plants are pumping out clean water at higher rates, but that it could still be another week before the facilities are running at 100 percent.
“We’re feeling really, really positive about being able to lift the boil water notice on Sunday,” Meszaros said, noting that water quality has been good within the system. “We’re in the process of gathering water samples across our system and tanks.”
After the notice is lifted, residents probably won’t have to flush their pipes before drinking, but water-use restrictions are expected to remain in effect at least through the beginning of next week. Meszaros implored residents not to “go crazy” when the notice is lifted.
“We just want to ask people to be as cautious as they reasonably can before they start stepping on the gas again,” he said.