AUSTIN (Talk1370.com) -- Austin Water officials said late Saturday they expect a system-wide boil water notice to last "for a few days" and have detailed the steps that need to be taken to get the city's water system back to full service.
Saturday's boil water notice - the third system-wide notice issued in the last four years - was issued as a precautionary measure after an "internal treatment process issue" was discovered at the Ullrich Water Treatment Plant, one that resulted in high turbidity in the plant's output.
Related
"It's becoming clear that this was errors from our operating staff at our Ullrich plant," said Austin Water Director Greg Meszaros, including "oversights in how they attended to the process of treating the water at Ullrich."
"All of our staff that operate our plants are licensed operators who know how to manage plants; they know the importance of managing turbidity or clarity, and to take immediate actions when they see those processes starting to have problems. Unfortunately, that did not happen here," said Meszaros.
According to Meszaros, five steps need to be completed to get the water system back to full service. Officials are hopeful that process could be completed by Tuesday afternoon or evening.
The first step, which was completed Saturday evening, was to get the Ullrich plant back online. The second step was to get Ullrich back to its normal production levels - according to city documents, Ullrich is the largest of three treatment plants in the Austin Water system, and has a capacity of 167 million gallons per day. Meszaros said the Ullrich plant was back at full production levels during the day on Sunday.
The next step is to then take water samples from the plant and the water system. If those sampling results come back with no water quality issues indicated, then the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality will authorize lifting of the boil water notice.
As long as the notice remains in effect, customers served by Austin Water - including both direct customers of the utility and more than a dozen water suppliers around the metro area who obtain water at wholesale rates from the utility - should bring water intended for drinking or cooking uses to a rolling boil for two minutes before consuming it or cooking with it.
Austin Homeland Security Emergency Management director Juan Ortiz said more than 100 pallets of bottled water had been distributed to residents through Sunday afternoon, with more supplies on the way. Additional distribution sites are expected to be opened on Monday.
Meszaros said a full investigation will be conducted into how the incident happened. "All actions are on the table," said Meszaros. "Turbidity is a primary measure of water quality and one of the most important things that we manage at the plant, so everyone is clear about the importance of turbidity, and so this is not an acceptable outcome for this to be from operations."