One city in Texas is showing its ingenuity in the face of a serious dearth of water by developing creative solutions.
Residents of the city of Odessa in West Texas have resorted to making their own makeshift emergency water supplies after an outage in the city’s water system left them without access to water for several days in the sweltering heat. This occurred even as utility crews worked feverishly on Wednesday to restore normal service.
After a 24-inch (61-centimeter) main burst on Monday afternoon, the city reported that water pressure was partially or lost at 165,000 residences and businesses as a result of the break. Around eight in the morning on Wednesday, the water treatment facility in Odessa was brought back online, but workers were still in the process of “recharging” the system, which involves gently adding water back into the system to ensure that there are no further leaks.
In a video message that was uploaded on Facebook in the afternoon on Wednesday, City Manager Michael Marrero was heard saying, “I want to promise you that we are employing every resource at our disposal to ensure that we get this community back to the way it was before this big line break.”
The Director of Public Works, Thomas Kerr, stated that a little leak had been discovered on Wednesday afternoon and that it was manageable in his estimation. He expressed the hope that the system would be fully recharged by Thursday, but he also reminded people that they should continue to boil their tap water before ingesting it to destroy any bacteria that might be present. According to him, it was likely that the boil-water advisory would remain in effect until Friday.
