Austin Water answers questions about what caused recent boil water notice

AUSTIN (KXAN) — Austin Water is answering questions following a citywide boil water notice last week, the third in just four years.

On Friday, Austin Water Director Greg Meszaros resigned from his position after 15 years.

Prior to his resignation, Meszaros answered some burning questions most everyone has about the boil water notice that lasted Feb. 5-8.

Meszaros wrote a memo to Austin Mayor Steve Adler and the city council explaining why it took 12 hours for the notice to be issued since the onset of the problem, if any contaminants were ever in the water system and if bills will be adjusted due to customers flushing their faucets, among other questions.

Mezsaros reiterated that the notice was not brought on by winter weather, but rather employee error. He said three employees are now on administrative leave while an investigation takes place.

"A full review of this event has begun to determine the events leading up to the operational error at the Ullrich Treatment Plant and to identify corrective actions needed to prevent this from occurring again," Mezsaros said in the memo. "The employees will not perform plant operation duties until the investigation has been completed and management has assessed any applicable discipline in accordance with the Municipal Civil Services Rules."

Their employment status hasn't changed, the memo said.

Meszaros said while an investigation is still ongoing and there will be more questions and answers "in the coming weeks," he offered a preliminary timeline on the process of finding out there was an issue with the city's water system and ultimately issuing the boil water notice.

Why did it take 12 hours to issue the notice?

At 8 a.m., Feb. 5, Meszaros said "increased turbidity was detected at Ullrich Water Treatment Plant." He said additional staff members were sent to the plant to see what was going on, but not how many. By 9:30 a.m., the plant was taken offline and production was increased at the city's two other plants, Davis and Handcox. That took several hours, Meszaros said.

By noon, Austin Water notified its Emergency Operations Center and it began to take samples for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to test. Three hours later, sample collection was complete and sent to TCEQ.

At 5:15 p.m., Austin Water and TCEQ met to review the data, and TCEQ made the determination a boil water notice "was required per state regulations," due to high turbidity. Austin Water began preparing all the notifications and translating them, along with "reviewing requirements with wholesale customers and elected officials."

By 7:30 p.m., the boil water notice was officially issued, the memo said.

TCEQ began testing samples at 11 p.m. Feb. 7, and less than 24 hours later at 10:20 p.m., Austin City Manager Spencer Cronk and the city council were notified that the samples passed TCEQ testing and the notice was lifted.

The memo said while Austin Water began notifying customers through its web portal, it made a conscious effort to not send the Warn Central Texas until 8 a.m. the next day "to avoid notifying people during overnight hours."

Were there any contaminants in the water?

Many people asked if there were any contaminants in the water, and Meszaros said "there has been no evidence of contaminants in the water during this event." He said due to the high turbidity, and it being outside of state regulations, there was a heightened risk there could have been contaminants.

What about my bill? Will it be adjusted for having to flush faucets?

As far as customers' bills being potentially adjusted due to recommended faucet flushes, Austin Water doesn't plan on doing that. "Flushing impacts would have been minimal," the memo said.

What caused the spike in turbidity?

The memo said the employee error "increased the addition of processed solids, mostly comprised of lime." A mix of water a calcium carbonate is needed to "seed" the water treatment basin, and rather than stopping after "a couple of hours," it continued for "most of the night," the memo said.

The memo said Austin Water saying it will "evaluate Interlock technology that prevents high turbidity water from leaving the filters," and other automated processes that may have helped prevent something like this from happening.

"Austin Water has taken immediate steps to increase system redundancies that include increasing the frequency of turbidity audible alarms, automatic notification of supervisors for turbidity exceedances, and automatic shutdown of the filtration system when turbidities are exceeded," the memo said.