Boil water notice for the entire city of Houston...SMH (Center: school, live)

[SanJac]

Originally Posted by utche96

Man, does the water treatment facility not have a backup generator for power failures? Seems like a really bad design if true.

Yes, they have backup generators but they are not automatic. They have to manually be started.

This little event caught the city off guard.

[utche96]

Houston Water Director Yvonne Williams Forrest told KHOU Sunday night the water boil notice was a formality.

Thats one hell of a formality. Schools cancelled. People staying home from work. Sounds like she is basically saying the water is actually safe to drink and all of this is really just a paper requirement.

[WRM20]

Originally Posted by usc619

My understanding is a car hit a pole that was feeding the water plant. Has nothing to do with the infrastructure

https://fb.watch/h4ATrlp7km/?mibextid=qC1gEa

That accident was a long way from the treatment plant, which is next to the Summerwood subdivision near Lake Houston.

[WRM20]

Originally Posted by utche96

Thats one hell of a formality. Schools cancelled. People staying home from work. Sounds like she is basically saying the water is actually safe to drink and all of this is really just a paper requirement.

It is a formality. The TCEQ regulation requires this if the line pressure falls below 20psi. Public Works says the pressure dropped for less than a minute, but was below the regulatory number, so the boil water notice was mandatory.

Houston is a little unusual in that it doesn't use water towers to provide pressure in the water system, but has pumps running. It's been like that since I moved here in 1976. I am guessing that maintaining pressure with pumps is more efficient and less costly than pumping water into the water towers, especially with the volume of water Houston uses.

[utche96]

Originally Posted by WRM20

It is a formality. The TCEQ regulation requires this if the line pressure falls below 20psi. Public Works says the pressure dropped for less than a minute, but was below the regulatory number, so the boil water notice was mandatory.

Houston is a little unusual in that it doesn't use water towers to provide pressure in the water system, but has pumps running. It's been like that since I moved here in 1976. I am guessing that maintaining pressure with pumps is more efficient and less costly than pumping water into the water towers, especially with the volume of water Houston uses.

I'm fine with using pumps for pressure provided they have a robust and automatic back-up power supply. I hope they do a proper root cause analysis. Risking a water boil for a simple power outage is totally unacceptable.

[katygirl68]

Originally Posted by CastletonSnob1

A lot of people on Twitter are saying that Texans deserve this for voting for Abbott.

I'm no fan of Abbott, and yes, this happened because of the power grid that Abbott hasn't fixed, but he had nothing to do with the fact that the water plant was having problems at 10:30 AM, but the city officials didn't put out a notice until 7:30 PM.

That’s because Twitter bots are stupid. This has nothing to do with Gregg Abbott, and everything to do with local government bureaucracy being incompetent.

[katygirl68]

Originally Posted by SanJac

Seriously? People are so stupid to make this political.

It's city of Houston water for crying out loud!

I’m making it political, but I’m certainly not blaming Abbott.

[Dopo]

Originally Posted by usc619

Amazing at what level people will stoop to make light of something in order to push an agenda ( whatever that might be).

What part of the fact I posted offended you?

[Dopo]

Originally Posted by WRM20

The plant has backup power generators to help maintain water pressure in the event of an emergency, but they are not set to work automatically, Jones said.

What?????? is that a joke?

[WRM20]

Originally Posted by Dopo

What?????? is that a joke?

No. I'm not surprised. I am going to assume that the generators are pretty big, given the amount of water that's pumped into the system, and larger generators take more time to start up and shut down safely and without damage to the engines.

As part of the expansion of the Northeast Treatment plant, a 30MW microgrid is being installed. I don't know if it's up and running yet, but the provider says that system has a 10 second cold start. I'm sure we will hear more over the next few days.