Texans’ misery not over yet: Water disruptions linger
Boil-water advisories are starting to be lifted
Although temperatures warmed up across storm-battered Texas on Monday, millions still struggled with water shortages, boil-water advisories and flooding damage from burst pipes, and about 12,000 customers remained without power.
As of 10 a.m. Central Monday, more than 1,200 public water systems were reporting disruptions in service because of last week’s weather, many of them leading to boil-water notices, the Texas Council on Environmental Quality said.
“This is affecting more than 8.7 million people in 200 Texas counties,” Gary Rasp, a spokesman for the council, told USA TODAY. Most of those 8.7 million are under boil-water notices, he said.
Rasp said 147 public water systems serving a population of just under 120,000 people are nonoperational. Eight public water systems’ wastewater treatment facilities have reported as nonoperational, he said.
In Austin, however, a boil-water notice issued last week was lifted for parts of the city Monday morning, including downtown and areas of East Austin, Austin Water officials said.
“Customers in Austin Water’s central pressure zone no longer need to boil water used for drinking, cooking and making ice,” Austin Water said.
In San Antonio, authorities said Sunday that water had been restored to 98% of the city.
And in Houston, the boil-water advisory was lifted late Sunday. “The historic freezing temperatures in Houston last week caused water pressure to drop throughout the city,” according to a statement from Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner. “I appreciate everyone’s patience as Houston Water crews worked nonstop to restore the pressure and gain the TCEQ’S approval to lift the boil water notice.”
However, in a tweet, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said “unfortunately, this doesn’t apply to the millions dealing with burst pipes. This is not a disaster we will recover from overnight but we will continue to overcome together as a community. Be sure to check in on your neighbors during this challenging time.”
More than 70 deaths have been linked to the intense cold and damaging storms that swept through a wide swath of the nation last week, about half of those in Texas.
Elsewhere, more than 26,000 homes and businesses in West Virginia and another 21,000 in Kentucky were without power Monday. That number was about 16,000 in Mississippi and over 18,000 in Oregon.
Although the power is back on for most Texans, some consumers are facing massive increases in their bills as the result of variable pricing offered by some electric service providers.
Houston resident David Astrein, a human resources director at a manufacturing company, said he’s been charged $2,738.66 so far this month versus $129.85 in January for a three-bedroom home with a detached garage. He and his wife stopped using their dishwasher, washer and dryer and turned on as few lights as possible at night. They kept the heat on for their 5-month-old son.
Many other outraged residents took to social media to show electricity bills ranging as high as $8,000. According to their screenshots, most are customers of Griddy Energy, a power supplier with a unique business model in which electricity is based on real-time prices in wholesale power markets, therefore exposing consumers to wild swings in prices.
The weather will cooperate for ongoing cleanup efforts across the central and southern U.S. this week. Although a rebound in temperatures began over the weekend, temperatures will moderate even further over the coming days, Accuweather said. In fact, over the upcoming week, temperatures are forecast to surge to levels 30, 40 and 50 degrees Fahrenheit higher than during the depths of the frigid air from Feb. 13 through Feb. 16.
By Wednesday, highs are expected to range from near 40 in Chicago to the lower 70s in Houston, which will follow low temperatures from the middle of this past week ranging from 5 below zero in Chicago to 13 above zero in Houston.
With the colder air locked up to the north in Canada, the warmth will be able to trickle as far as the Eastern Seaboard by the middle of the week, Accuweather said.
Contributing: Kelsey Bradshaw, Luz Moreno-lozano and Lori Hawkins, The Austin-american Statesman
Thursday’s USA TODAY article “Congress again debates reparations for slavery” described the continuing interest in establishing a federal commission to determine the U.S. government’s responsibility related to slavery prior to the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in 1865 and possible compensation.
Not only would such a commission be costly for the American people, but also the estimated cost of compensating Americans descended from slaves could be as much as $13 trillion, or even more, as stated in the article.
My parents and those of my husband came from Europe to this country in early 1900. Neither of our families has ever been involved with slavery or its history in America. This is true of millions of other families whose immigration story is not related to the events of 150-plus years ago.
And who would bear the cost of any settlement? How would eligible recipients be identified? This concept is both divisive and disruptive to our nation.
The United States has made tremendous strides in equality in all segments of our population. We continue to have valid challenges to face in our country today, which are being recognized and addressed. Let us work together toward resolving these critical problems for all of us.
Ruth W. Johnson, Columbus