Millions of Texans suffer under water disruptions
Although temperatures warmed across Texas on Monday, millions still struggled with water shortages, boil water advisories and water damage from burst pipes, and about 12,000 customers remained without power.
As of Monday morning, 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 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,” Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said in a statement. “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 an additional 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.
Many residents took to social media to show electricity bills 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.