Houston boil water notice steams residents, businesses

A boil water notice issued late Sunday closed Houston schools and businesses on Monday and Tuesday, leaving residents frustrated with the city’s communication and scrambling to adjust their post-thanksgiving plans.

Word came Monday afternoon that the Houston Independent School District would be closed for a second day.

The city issued the notice after a power failure caused pressure at the East Water Purification Plant to dip below the level required to meet safety standards Sunday morning. City officials have said they believe the water was and continues to be safe, but they were required to notify the public about the pressure drop.

“A decision was made out of an abundance of caution to issue the boil water notice,” said Mayor Sylvester Turner at a press conference Monday morning.

Many people around the city were alarmed to learn how long officials had waited to let people know about the incident. Although monitoring sites across the city reported low pressure at 11 a.m. on Sunday, city officials did not issue a boil water notice until after 6 p.m. that evening.

Stephen Madden, who lives in the Hyde Park neighborhood, said it was too late to find water supplies when he first found out about the notice around 9 p.m. Sunday. Residents had been using water all day Sunday, he added.

“Why was there no notice earlier in the day?” Madden asked. “At least a heads-up that there may be an issue? We need a full explanation.”

City administrators defended the timing of the alert during a news conference Monday, saying that they weren’t even sure the incident would require a notice.

“There were questions as to whether or not a boil water notice had to be issued,” Turner said at Monday’s press conference, noting that the longest any sensor had been below the required pounds per square inch was 30 minutes. “This was a situation that was not being overlooked or ignored.”

The problems with the water system unfolded over several hours Sunday morning, beginning when two water plants lost power at 10:30 a.m. A third lost power 20 minutes later. Centerpoint Energy, which delivers power and natural gas to the region, said that the failure was “caused by the city’s equipment and not related to Centerpoint Energy’s system.”

At 11 a.m., water pressure at 16 monitoring sites dropped below required levels. Fourteen of those 16 were only under for two minutes; the remaining two sites were back up by 11:30. The power was restored at all three plants by 12:30 p.m. on Sunday.

Even though city officials believed that the water wasn’t dangerous, jurisdictions are required to inform the public within 24 hours of water pressure dipping below the required 20 pounds per square inch — even if it’s just for a moment. The state rules are based on federal law.

The city collected water samples on Monday morning for testing at its own lab. Testing will take until at least 3 a.m. Tuesday, Turner said. The city will only be able to lift the notice when the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality sees the lab results, verifies them and gives the OK. The agency plans to have personnel on hand in the middle of the night to review them.

Word of the boil notice spread Sunday night and spilled over into Monday. People ran out to buy water, causing grocery stores like H-E-B, Central Market and Mi Tienda to limit customers to two units of any gallon water jugs or water bottle multipacks.

Hospitals were largely unaffected Monday, but Houstonians still had to deal with unexpected school and business closures stretching into Tuesday.