Austin Water Issues Boil Water Notice

[bolverk 29727]

Thank god.

And has been for days. Grateful that I live alone.

[KaiserSoze 998]

oh and...

 

Quote

What steps do I need to take for my refrigerator water dispenser and ice maker?

We recommend drawing and discarding at least one quart of water from your refrigerator water dispenser before drinking. Automatic ice makers should be emptied of any ice created during the boil water order; allow the machine to make new ice and discard any ice produced during the next 24 hours.

 

[freyguy 4302]

[Red Five 40895]

I’m at work by myself and every fucking phone in the building is ringing from COA. This is intolerable.

[Trey3216 15362]

7 minutes ago, Red Five said:

I’m at work by myself and every fucking phone in the building is ringing from COA. This is intolerable.

One hour from now, your username will check out 

[Anastasis 23486]

1 hour ago, KaiserSoze said:

Since a couple of people have asked about this...

 

 

Y’all motherfuckers in third world Austin wearing clothes steeped in shit water. 

[Guest]

34 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Y’all motherfuckers in third world Austin wearing clothes steeped in shit water. 

It masks the patchouli...

[Biff Tannen 45744]

Never forget.

[RomaVicta 30024]

1 hour ago, Anastasis said:

Y’all motherfuckers in third world Austin wearing clothes steeped in shit water. 

I guess I'm hydroponic. Got sprouts coming up in all my underwear.

[Guest Lobo]

What a shining example of Austin leadership.  "Hey, while it's still top of mind for everyone involved...should we do a top-down review of what happened on the both the treatment side and also how we got/didn't get information out to Austin residents and businesses?"

Austin City Council & Mayor: "Nope, fuck you.  Everything is fine.  Maybe in a month, we'll look into it."  

Edited October 28, 2018 by Lobo

[Judge Roybeanbag 11821]

I don’t care what they say, I’m gonna flush my pipes in my house tonight. 

[gmr548 16617]

I think I am going to keep using Miller Lite to brush my teeth.

[CooterBrown 18031]

I don’t care what they say, I’m gonna flush my pipes in my house tonight. 

I flushed my pipe at your mom’s last night.

[KaiserSoze 998]

I've kept to THC, it has been worthwhile. 

[Biff Tannen 45744]

26 minutes ago, KaiserSoze said:

I've kept to THC, it has been worthwhile. 

You drank your bong water?

[Trey3216 15362]

5 hours ago, slorch said:

It masks the patchouli...

“During the rectification of the Vuldronaii, the Traveller came as a large and moving Torb! Then, during the third reconciliation of the last of the Meketrex supplicants, they chose a new form for him - that of a giant Sloar! Many Shubs and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of a Sloar that day, I can tell you!”

[PatrickMcHorn 376]

“During the rectification of the Vuldronaii, the Traveller came as a large and moving Torb! Then, during the third reconciliation of the last of the Meketrex supplicants, they chose a new form for him - that of a giant Sloar! Many Shubs and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of a Sloar that day, I can tell you!”

There's something very strange about that man.

[Deej 76936]

According to Foxy Troxy, the city paid to embed another artist-in-residence after the boil water order was in place to inspire creative thinking in the department. This city is so fucked up.

[Guest Lobo]

4 minutes ago, Deej said:

According to Foxy Troxy, the city paid to embed another artist-in-residence after the boil water order was in place to inspire creative thinking in the department. This city is so fucked up.

She also attempted twice, with two other council members supporting her, to get a formal investigation underway by Austin Water to see how this happened, how the communication channels both internally and to the citizens broke down in that first 24 hours, and what we can learn from this going forward to prevent future 7.5-day long water issues in what is about to become the nation's 10th largest city.  Ann Kitchen and Pio came along and cock-blocked the measure.  Adler basically told her to get bent.  

Welp, this afternoon Spencer "Could I Be Any Whiter?" Cronk proposed an eerily similar measure to the Mayor, and yep---the exact same investigation that Ellen called for that rest of council said wasn't appropriate at this time...is now under way.  

[Biff Tannen 45744]

2 hours ago, Lobo said:

She also attempted twice, with two other council members supporting her, to get a formal investigation underway by Austin Water to see how this happened, how the communication channels both internally and to the citizens broke down in that first 24 hours, and what we can learn from this going forward to prevent future 7.5-day long water issues in what is about to become the nation's 10th largest city.  Ann Kitchen and Pio came along and cock-blocked the measure.  Adler basically told her to get bent.  

Welp, this afternoon Spencer "Could I Be Any Whiter?" Cronk proposed an eerily similar measure to the Mayor, and yep---the exact same investigation that Ellen called for that rest of council said wasn't appropriate at this time...is now under way.  

Well that at least speaks well of Cronk, no?

[Guest Lobo]

Just now, Biff Tannen said:

Well that at least speaks well of Cronk, no?

At least he's doing his job, I agree.  But when Troxclair isn't there as their punching bag anymore...Cronk will take an idea away from Flanigan, or Pio, or Kitchen and they won't take so kindly to the uppity Nordic bureaucrat stealing and passing off their ideas and measures as his own. 

We certainly need a more competent and engaged City Manager as our city booms in size and complexity.  But Cronk may burn a few bridges by being a little too activist, that's what Council likes to shine at.  

[atomheartbevo 89809]

Probably only getting investigated because KXAN and some others were pressuring them.  I wouldn’t be surprised if FOI requests had been flying.  

That Austin Water graph that I posted showing that they had a huge problem Saturday at midnight would be a lot more interesting had they included data going back to Thursday (when Troxy said they knew they had problems).  

Edited October 30, 2018 by atomheartbevo

[atomheartbevo 89809]

11 hours ago, Deej said:

According to Foxy Troxy, the city paid to embed another artist-in-residence after the boil water order was in place to inspire creative thinking in the department. This city is so fucked up.

This kind of shit is why other cities laugh at us when we fuck up relatively simple problems.  

We still want to pretend we are a small city.  

[atomheartbevo 89809]

https://www.kxan.com/news/local/austin/city-emails-show-scramble-to-handle-boil-water-notice/1600238500

Quote

As major October floods muddied Austin’s reservoirs and clogged its water treatment plants, emails and text messages obtained by KXAN show city officials scrambling to handle the city’s first-ever citywide boil water notice and its repercussions.

The emails, sent between numerous city officials on the day the boil water notice began, show a concerted, exhausting, and, at times, chaotic effort to manage the unfolding emergency.

Oct. 22

Spoiler

With overly silted water drastically slowing water treatment capacity, city officials huddled late into the night on Oct. 21 to consider their options. By the early morning of Oct. 22, city leaders were planning press releases, email blasts and emergency communications to notify Austin of the boil water notice.

The emails started early. At 2:26 a.m. a communications officer with the city’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management emailed several of the city’s public information offices notifying them of an immediate boil water notice and providing a press release.

By 3:07 a.m. Don Hastings, Assistant Director of Environmental Health Services in the city’s Public Health Department, acknowledged the city’s emergency coordinators had “mobilized late Sunday night” to address the impending situation.

By 4:29 a.m. city officials announced a press conference to every Austin Water Utility employee. At that point, the blitz to inform the public, assess the gravity of the situation and fix the problem was fully underway.

“Austin Water has issued a city-wide boil water notice for all customers of Austin Water. The notice is being issued as the utility works to stabilize the water treatment system. Historic flood waters flowing into our water supply lakes contain very high levels of silt that makes it challenging for the water plants to produce the volume of water needed to supply customers at this time,” said an email from a city spokesman.

Another message to Austin Public Health officials at 7:23 a.m. shows city workers trying to address how to distribute bottled water and city messages to the Austin homeless population.

As city leaders gathered and discussed the situation, Austin Water Utility Director Greg Meszaros emailed city officials about an immediate citywide reduction in water use.

“I want to enact the director authority provisions given the emergency conditions we are experiencing. We are severely limited in capacity and need the public to curb demand so we can fill reservoirs. Thought appeals and boil order would have knocked down demand but not so far,” Meszaros said in a 7:44 a.m. email. “Main thing is make sure any outdoor watering, car washing and other similar discretionary use is stopped.”

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, city workers were working to distribute fresh water, procure food for workers at treatment plants and raise spending limits on city-owned purchase cards to allow for bulk purchases of items like water treatment chemicals, fresh water, food and more.

 “We are not sure how long this event will last, but it will at least be a couple of days. I am requesting an emergency increase to the authorized procards below. I would suggest that each of these procards per transaction limits be set at $50,000 with a maximum amount of at least $100,000 to $200,000,” said one city official in an email. “Please let us know as soon as possible what you might need from us to complete this increase in limits. If you need a emergency declaration, we can provide.” 

At one point, Austin officials fielded an offer from Fort Worth to provide a water tanker truck, according to emails.

Throughout the morning, city public information officers emailed back and forth about how best to message the public.

Just before noon the city’s health department and Mayor Steve Adler messaged about how the boil water notice would affect daycare and food establishments. Adler said he received an email saying one daycare closed over concerns about not being able to use tap water to wash hands.

Further emails between health department workers show some confusion over whether to advise the public to boil water for two or three minutes.

An email from Public Health’s Don Hastings said:

“Environmental Health Services has long used the two minute rolling boil standard to advise our commercial food establishments. The press release we sent, as entitled, is targeted to food establishments, which tend to have trained staff accustomed to follow specific protocols. The three minute standard, on the other hand, reflects a one minute safety margin with the general public in mind. With this as background, and for the sake of simplicity and consistency, EHSD is fine with 3-1-1 providing the 3 minute rolling boil standard to ensure an additional margin of safety.”

As the difficult day progressed, Meszaros got an encouraging email from Daryl Slusher, an assistant director of the Austin Water Utility.

“Had a late night call from Steve [Adler] and [City Manager] Spencer [Cronk] about the boiled water initiative to brainstorm Corpus Christi experience. Basically had to tell them it was an example of everything not to do. Watched the press conference the next day, I thought you all did a beautiful job with all the right experts in the room and everyone with a calm and in control demeanor. Tell Greg he did great despite struggling with a sore throat.”

 

A whole lot more at the link, including:

Quote

The City of Austin did not release all communications regarding the boil water notice and sent some of the materials requested by KXAN to the Texas Attorney General for an open records ruling.

What I would like to see, is why they didn't act prior to Sunday night/Monday morning, when they knew back on Thursday/Friday that they weren't going to have the capacity.  You look at the graphs they provided (suspiciously leaving out the days in question), the comments from City Council members, etc. and it was clear this did not come out of thin air.

Oh wait, it's Austin, and Formula 1.

Edited November 16, 2018 by atomheartbevo

[Guest Lobo]

Mayor Adler said, with a straight face (because he has no other expression other than melancholy), that it wasn't water or the budget that brought out Austinites to the polls...it was their adamant support of the Convention Center expansion.  He said this.  Out loud.  To people . 

[phdhorn 6224]

1 minute ago, Lobo said:

Mayor Adler said, with a straight face (because he has no other expression other than melancholy), that it wasn't water or the budget that brought out Austinites to the polls...it was their adamant support of the Convention Center expansion.  He said this.  Out loud.  To people . 

Yeah and he was re-elected by about 60% of the voters.  He could say his shit is peppermint flavored and people would buy it.  I'd probably just tell the voters they need to give me $100 each by Sunday midnight or they'll lose their citizenship, and I'd make serious bank.

[Guest Lobo]

Don't get me wrong, his margin of victory considering the field was impressive.  But it's why, in his mind, that many people turned out for him that baffles me.  

But seriously, we need to get to the bottom of the 48 hours of "mystery" at Austin Water.  Ann Kitchen would have us believe it's 6 people that can't be bothered with our questions right now because they're providing a million people with the purity of life.  But I've been in that building dozens of times.  There's 3 floors of people right now that aren't doing anything except shuffling the truth around.  

[phdhorn 6224]

1 minute ago, Lobo said:

Don't get me wrong, his margin of victory considering the field was impressive.  But it's why, in his mind, that many people turned out for him that baffles me.  

But seriously, we need to get to the bottom of the 48 hours of "mystery" at Austin Water.  Ann Kitchen would have us believe it's 6 people that can't be bothered with our questions right now because they're providing a million people with the purity of life.  But I've been in that building dozens of times.  There's 3 floors of people right now that aren't doing anything except shuffling the truth around.  

Bold:  Beto + incumbent mayor.

Also remember that since Austin voters defeated Prop J which called for public voting to make any changes to land development codes, I'm sure Adler and Company are even more equipped to say fuck you all, I'm in charge here, eat shit.  So they're probably stocking their toilets with voter question printouts and crowing about how they're saving on toilet paper costs.

[Guest Lobo]

That was a curious stroke of cognitive dissonance.  The very people that tirelessly fought CodeNEXT also shit on Prop J and their opportunity to be heard more clearly and proactively next time around.  That was weird.  Everything else I saw coming, but the people that shoved CodeNEXT up Adler's ass, turned around and gave him cash and the carte blanche to go repeat the same idiotic exercise in a couple years.  It's easy to crack wise on the Austin electorate, but that one is downright baffling.  There's no sociology model that can explain it.  

[UrbanAchiever 278]

Prop J was terrible. Our current land development code hasn't been comprehensively updated since 1984. It's outdated, and it's failing at every level to deliver the number of housing units we need to keep up with demand. It makes zero sense to delay changes for years when we know and have known that our current code and development processes are archaic and broken.

I'm not saying we need another CodeNEXT, but there are at least three or four changes that can be made today that will help deliver the number of housing units needed, and those should be done immediately without a citywide election.  

[SquishMitten 10440]

^^ So it hasn’t been updated in 34 years, but now that J was rejected, those updates will be coming posthaste?

[Guest Lobo]

Not posthaste.  But toot-sweet.  

[TheYoungHorn 58]

3 hours ago, Lobo said:

That was a curious stroke of cognitive dissonance.  The very people that tirelessly fought CodeNEXT also shit on Prop J and their opportunity to be heard more clearly and proactively next time around.  That was weird.  Everything else I saw coming, but the people that shoved CodeNEXT up Adler's ass, turned around and gave him cash and the carte blanche to go repeat the same idiotic exercise in a couple years.  It's easy to crack wise on the Austin electorate, but that one is downright baffling.  There's no sociology model that can explain it.  

What exactly are you talking about? 

One of the biggest factors in the CodeNEXT debacle was the ANC/preservationist/NIMBY wing of connected and concerned citizens that for the last few decades controlled the direction of Austin politics. 

Adler attempted to walk a tight rope in his "bargain" or "compromise" or whatever dumb thing he labeled it, in trying to update the code while also giving the anti-growth forces things he thought would placate them into supporting a code rewrite. 

The result was an ever-growing, ever worse CodeNEXT document that got longer, more confusing and in my view worse (and drastically more toward the status quo we have now) which each draft. 

These same people then also used the petition and Prop J to try to further hinder any ability to make land use changes. 

Unless you are referencing a different group of people/stakeholders, in which case, I again ask, who are you talking about? 

 

 

[skittlebrau 474]

On 11/16/2018 at 12:33 PM, TheYoungHorn said:

What exactly are you talking about? 

One of the biggest factors in the CodeNEXT debacle was the ANC/preservationist/NIMBY wing of connected and concerned citizens that for the last few decades controlled the direction of Austin politics. 

Adler attempted to walk a tight rope in his "bargain" or "compromise" or whatever dumb thing he labeled it, in trying to update the code while also giving the anti-growth forces things he thought would placate them into supporting a code rewrite. 

The result was an ever-growing, ever worse CodeNEXT document that got longer, more confusing and in my view worse (and drastically more toward the status quo we have now) which each draft. 

These same people then also used the petition and Prop J to try to further hinder any ability to make land use changes. 

Unless you are referencing a different group of people/stakeholders, in which case, I again ask, who are you talking about? 

 

 

Yeah, this exactly. Not sure what the other guy's point was.

[KaiserSoze 998]

It's the same typical shit from TheCruiser / Lobo

[Texas Jeff 1945]

Man, Austin's water reeks right now.  In theory this was caused by a two-inch layer of zebra mussels on the water intake pipe, but we have gone from zero to super smell in 24 hours and it does not seem to be getting better, although Austin Water has said it should be over soon.

Anybody understand how this could suddenly happen?  Did they clear out the pipe and cause a ton of zebra bits to flow into the system?

[clapclapclap 9000]

Slight tangent:  Do zebras have striped poop?

[Guest Lobo]

Depends on if there’s a Chipotle under sea level 

[Al Czervik 1231]

Reporting in from South Austin, south if Slaughter: water stinks. 

[South Austin 52619]

10 hours ago, Texas Jeff said:

Anybody understand how this could suddenly happen?  Did they clear out the pipe and cause a ton of zebra bits to flow into the system?

Shitter was full.

[freyguy 4302]

It's difficult taking care of things, so you can't expect much out of the folks in charge of our utilities.

But hey, at least we're getting another library. 

[Native Horn 3516]

11 hours ago, Al Czervik said:

Reporting in from South Austin, south if Slaughter: water stinks. 

Concur as of this morning.

[MissingInAction 25198]

I blame the sound walls and scooters.

[SubliminalHorn 6811]

I thought I was imagining things yesterday morning in the shower. Smelled very sludgey. I feel like I smell like zebra mussels after my showers

[Paper_jam 836]

I'm in NE Austin and haven't really noticed the smell (yet?) but I have noticed a slight brownish discoloration to the water if I open a faucet that has been idle for a day or two. May be a local issue (or isolated to my own house somehow).

 

 

[gsoda3 3283]

north austin, haven't noticed anything.

[MissingInAction 25198]

North Central- No poo smell this morning or when I went home for lunch.

[HornsOverIthaca 2335]

Good thing I only drink rain water and pure grain alcohol.

Edit:  and shower in vodka.

Edited February 8, 2019 by HornsOverIthaca

[BrazilHorn 6634]

Between the snowfall and bad seafood water, maybe it will keep the Californians from moving here.

[DCA_HORN 725]

The are having a typhus, measles, and plague outbreak. Wishful thinking.