“At the height of the water crisis on February 19, nearly 15 million people across Texas lost access to clean water, according to Gary Rasp, a spokesperson for TCEQ. This number reflects the problems that occurred in the water system itself, rather than in people’s homes.”
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“As the storm hit, the rapidly escalating blackout on February 15 forced water treatment plants offline. At the same time, the freezing temperatures broke water mains and people started to turn on their faucets to prevent their pipes from freezing.
Due to the combination of a drop in supply from treatment plants failing and the increase in water demand from dripping faucets and leaks, the pressure dropped in the system.
A loss in pressure can lead to dangerous bacteria in the water supply, so millions of people were told to boil their water before drinking or cooking with it. Of course, this was an impossibility for those who were also hit by the power outage and lacked electricity to power their stove.
The winter storm didn’t just cause water issues in Texas. From Oklahoma City to Jackson, Mississippi, hundreds of thousands of people also faced water shortages due to dropping water pressure.”
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“in some cases, residents have been without water for weeks because of aconfluence of failures.”
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“Rebecca Sanchez told Voxthat many of the residents in her apartment complex, the Hillside Villas, have been left without any running water for two weeks afterpipes burst.Repairs have been slow, and Sanchez said the property managers have failed to provide adequate emergency water supplies in the interim.”
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““We underinvest in maintenance to such a degree that these disasters tend to be pretty catastrophic,” she said. The failure of infrastructure is still being felt by the 390,000 people boiling their water in Texas today, and the nearly 2,000 people whose utilities were still not delivering water at all as of Friday, according to TCEQ.
“Adapting to extreme events and adapting to climate change is going to make all of this harder, but that’s not the only thing that is a problem,” Grubert said. “What we are really starting to have to face is this kind of combined issue where we have failed to invest in these systems for a very long time, and now we are also playing on hard mode.””