SAWS officials announce boiling water notice

SAN ANTONIO San Antonio Water System customers must boil their water before drinking it until further notice.

The recommendation comes from SAWS president and CEO Robert Puente during Wednesday’s city council meeting.

An official boiling water notice is expected to be issued later Wednesday.

Puente said the boiling water notice comes from an abundance of caution due to low water pressure and said only water used for drinking needs to be boiled. Puente said tap water is safe for hand washing and bathing.

“It is safe to say that we are going to deal with this situation for days, not hours,” Puente said. “This situation is likely to worsen and more pipes on private property will experience fractures, and we will have a harder time maintaining pressure.”

Puente said as long as there are electricity outages, there will be water problems.

SAWS officials said most of the disruptions were concentrated in the far north side of the city or on the far south side. He said although there are small bags of water outages in the center of the city, low water pressure was a bigger problem for most customers.

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He also said that the lack of power is not currently the only problem for water customers. He said because there are so many broken pipes in the city, there is a huge amount of water leaking and it does not reach customers. He said due to leaks, the city uses more water than we do on some of our hottest summer days.

District 8 councilor Manny Pelaez asked SAWS officials how people can be expected to boil water without electricity.

Puente said SAWS officials will soon meet with the HEB to coordinate a way to get water for residents who need it.

Steve Clouse. Senior vice president and chief operating officer of SAWS told board members that CPS Energy had asked SAWS to take their pumping stations off the ‘critical circuits’ when ERCOT’s ongoing interruptions began. He said the SAWS pumps had lost power this week.

“What we’re undergoing is probably a storm once in a generation, a storm in a lifetime,” Puente said. “SAWS is the largest power consumer of our energy and CPS Energy is the largest user of water in our community. So we coordinated with each other. We worked with each other and tried to let each other know what was going on and what was the best way to save power and save energy. ”

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Puente asked customers to be patient and said he admits many customers try to call and fail.

“Our customer service representatives are working from home due to the COVID pandemic, but now their homes are unfortunately without power,” Puente said. ‘They do not have it or do not have internet services. This causes us to be unable to answer the phones and get answers to the public and our community. ”

Puente said this week was a learning experience.

‘We will use this emergency to reevaluate what works and what does not work. “Whether it’s our equipment, our workers, our answers, our dispatch, our communication, will be everything we look at and we want to improve on the promise I give to each and every one of you,” Puente said.

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