In addition to the request of more than 200,000 Fort Worth residents to boil water due to a power outage at a treatment plant, the Fort Worth Water Department also wants to end rumors that it will soon cut off city water because ” the pipes are bursting, ”a viewer told NBC 5.
“We do not close the water to prevent major breaks, but we are going to close the water to fix the major breaks,” said spokeswoman Mary Gugliuzza. “We are seeing more outages, so people will have temporary outages” in problem areas.
Gugliuzza says there are about two dozen active outages mainly within Loop 820, where there are older cast iron tubes. Repairs are underway, but they may be slower than normal to protect teams working in cold temperatures.
“We encourage people to keep water available in the event of a major outage,” she said. Water re-emphasis is only turned off to fix a major break.
As the water department responds to current outages, it is also trying to defrost the equipment to get the Eagle Mountain water plant back up and running as soon as possible.
A power outage at the plant forced the city to extend a boiling water warning to include a total of 212,000 Fort Worth residents. Nine quotes that purchase Fort Worth drinking water – Haslet, Keller, Lake Worth, Northlake, Roanoke, Saginaw, Southlake, Trophy Club and Westlake – have been notified.
“The good news is that we now have energy in all of our treatment facilities, but the challenge is that everything froze,” said Gugliuzza, explaining that several plants were affected by power cuts that started on Monday morning. “We were trying to keep different parts of the system up and running, but unfortunately we weren’t able to do that with most of the northern part of the system.”
Gugliuzza said that without power and heating, the above ground valves and control mechanisms for some of the pumping stations simply froze when temperatures plummeted. The problem was not the pipes, she said.
In a post on social media, the water department acknowledged that the lack of energy means that some residents are unable to boil water.
“We know that the boiling water notice does not make sense if customers do not have water. The Texas Environmental Quality Commission has a specific language required for these notices that we must use, and that is the reason for the notice,” said the post.
A plan to create locations to distribute bottled water to residents also ran into problems, the water department also explained in the post.
“We anticipated having them in operation today, but this morning we learned that our emergency bottled water supplier cannot open his factory. The water utility is looking for alternative sources of supply. We will disclose locations and times as soon as we guarantee supplies. “
In a notice to residents, the city said: “When water pressure is restored, affected customers should receive a boiling water warning at least on Wednesday. The utility will issue another warning as soon as it verifies that the water is safe. “.
In the meantime, customers with questions can call the water customer service at 817-392-4477 or send an email to [email protected].