The water is slowly returning to Texans almost a week after an unprecedented winter storm led to widespread power cuts and created water problems for millions. More than 14 million people are still without water or under boiling water warnings.
“We saw the total population being affected by this drop to about 14.3 million, where it was about 14.9 million yesterday,” Toby Baker, executive director of the Texas Environmental Quality Commission, said at a news conference on Saturday. Waterless residents fell from 350,000 to about 156,000 overnight, he said.
Public water systems in Texas are any system that has more than 15 connections – about 7,000 systems in all – which makes returning water to residents a primarily local responsibility, according to Baker. “They are not necessarily the size of Houston, or the size of Austin, they are rural connections and rural water systems as well,” he explained.
Through mobile labs and partnerships with EPA labs, neighboring states and large municipalities, Texas has already identified enough facilities to test samples from more than 1,000 systems still left under a boiling water warning, according to Baker.
“At the moment, we have the capacity in these labs to handle the samples needed to raise boiling water warnings,” said Baker.
“My hope is … that we have reached the worst and stabilized, and now we are just coming out of the hole we are in.”
On Saturday morning, the storm was associated with at least 27 deaths in the state, and food and drinking water were scarce for many.
Baker said the state has never seen a winter weather event of this magnitude. “We are not the Northeast, we are not Minnesota,” he said, calling the storm a “great learning experience”.
“If it happens again in our life, we will be prepared for it,” said Baker.
A “complete overhaul” of the regulations that allowed millions to be without power for days was needed. Governor Greg Abbott issued an executive order that added emergency items to the state legislative session asking the legislature to investigate ERCOT’s preparedness and response to the storm.
Texas emergency management chief Nim Kidd criticized the lack of safe drinking water in the state. “There needs to be more locations across the state, at the local and state level, where resources are organized or stored before the event,” said Kidd.
“To put it bluntly, we have a very limited supply at the local government level of cities that have only warehouses full of bottled water that are owned by the city, or that have ready meals that are owned by the local government – generally not there,” he said. he. We rely on the private sector for our daily needs. ”
President Joe Biden has declared that Texas is going through a major disaster. People in 77 of the state’s 254 counties will be eligible for federal funding to aid recovery efforts. The assistance includes donations for temporary housing and home repairs, as well as “low-cost loans” to cover losses on uninsured properties, the White House said on Saturday in a statement.
Li Cohen contributed reporting.