Water is slowly returning to Texans almost a week after an unprecedented winter storm resulted in widespread power outages and water problems for millions. More than 14 million people still don’t have water or are under cooking water messages.
“We’ve seen the total population drop to about 14.3 million as a result, from about 14.9 million yesterday,” Toby Baker, executive director of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, said at a news conference Saturday. Residents without water dropped from 350,000 to about 156,000 overnight, he said.
Public water systems in Texas are any system with more than 15 hookups – about 7,000 systems in total – making returning water to residents primarily a local responsibility, Baker said. “These are not necessarily the size of Houston, or the size of Austin, these are also rural connections and rural water systems,” he explained.
Through mobile labs and partnerships with labs from the EPA, neighboring states and major municipalities, Texas has now identified enough facilities to test samples from the more than 1,000 systems still under a boiling water alert, Baker said.
“Right now, in those labs, we have the capacity to process the samples needed to clear the boiling water messages,” said Baker.
“I hope … we kind of hit the worst and we’ve stabilized, and now it’s just kind of coming out of the hole we’re in.”
As of Saturday morning, the storm had been linked to at least 27 deaths in the state, and food and safe drinking water were in short supply for many.
Baker said the state has never seen a winter weather event of this magnitude. “We’re not the Northeast, we’re not Minnesota,” he said, calling the storm a “massive learning experience.”
“If this happens again in our lifetime, we’ll be prepared for it,” said Baker.
A “complete overhaul” of the regulations has been called for that would allow millions of days to go without power. Governor Greg Abbott has issued an executive order adding emergency supplies to the state legislative session and asking the legislature to investigate ERCOT’s preparation and response to the storm.
Nim Kidd, chief of Texas Emergency Management, criticized the state’s lack of reserved drinking water. “There must be more locations in the state, at the local level and at the state level, where resources are staged or stored before the event,” said Kidd.
“To put it bluntly, we have a very limited local government-level supply of cities that only have warehouses full of bottled water owned by the city, or that have ready meals owned by the local government – usually don’t exist , “he said. We rely on the private sector for our day-to-day needs.”
President Joe Biden has declared that Texas is going through a major disaster. People in 77 of the state’s 254 counties are eligible for federal funding to aid in recovery efforts. The aid includes subsidies for temporary housing and home repairs, as well as “cheap loans” to cover uninsured property losses, the White House said in a statement Saturday.
Li Cohen contributed to reporting.