How Wimberley Water battled the freeze

In Wimberley, the occurrence of weather significantly below freezing is rare. The first thing to worry about is busted pipes. When temperatures neared zero-degrees last month, there were plenty of issues, including the since-rescinded boil water notices. As essential workers do, those at the Wimberley Water Supply Corporation showed up for work to do everything possible to combat the freeze.

The Wimberley Water Supply Corporation issued the boil water notice after there was a loss of pressure in the system. This was due to both the power outages and the amount of water flowing through the system during the freeze.

It was just one step in a long process of a local water corporation dealing with the historic freeze.

During the emergency, few problems appeared in the approximately 65 miles of pipe providing water to their customers, according to WWSC General Manager Garrett Allen. There were no breaks in the WWSC’s network aside from a pressure regulator intended on keeping the amount of water level in two tanks.

But there were many breaks in the lines on the customer’s side, that is, after water leaves the water meter. WWSC’s main concern initially was turning off the water at the meters for customers who needed it or informing customers where that valve was located on their property.

Then the biggest problems became slow travel checking on intake wells.

Alex Villaret and Allen traveled to the wells, “Eagle Rock, Paradise Hills, Wayside. (And the others) each and every day two times a day, going five miles per hour,” Allen said. “It took a long time to go to each one. We have to be careful to monitor the disinfectant, which is the chlorine injector. When you lose power, you lose your injector pump, so we were making sure our water was properly disinfected. You have three different entry points at six different wells. It took so long, when you finally got to one it was time to turn around and go back to the one you just got turned on.”

As with most people, the power blackouts took over as the biggest issue.

“We did not know the blackout schedule – no idea. We tried to get a hold of PEC,” Allen said.

It was a team effort to keep the operation moving, even for those who were on vacation. The Administrative Manager Julie Smith finally tracked down PEC hours later while she was traveling at the airport in Arizona.

“They didn’t have us on the critical grid, which they should have,” Allen said. “We have already moved forward with an application to PEC to move on to it… The reason we couldn’t keep up is there were so many people dripping faucets and so many leaks, and we couldn’t get the tanks full because the blackouts kept shutting our pumps off. 70 percent of the system never lost water, but those at higher elevations lost water because our tank’s level dropped.”

Allen said that backup generators would not have helped.

“They’d have to be on site. We’d need six, one at each site, and we’d need diesel storage, at least five days worth, that’s 1,000 gallons. If we had a generator running at every single place, I don’t think we could have kept them running for four days. It might have helped a little bit, but I don’t think much.”

WWSC prepared for the storm days earlier by driving around and having customers place blankets in the pocket holding the shut off valve and meters. The whole ordeal was a team effort that even extended beyond the corporation.

“Thanks to Chief (Carroll) Czichos, the fire department helped in turning water off at the house, for those that could not make it or those that called in from elsewhere.”

“With the boil water notice, you deal with a huge amount of red tape to take it off… Even our employees that couldn’t make it into work were working from home. There is a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes to get the boil water notice out and getting it delivered to customers where they know.”

Test results to rescind the boil water notice came quickly. Allen dropped off water samples to LCRA labs on Saturday morning. The labs, normally closed on the weekend, were working overtime to help get test results complete. WWSC’s results came back Sunday morning instead of getting the lab results as normal on Tuesday, which would have meant canceling school until Wednesday.

The corporation has also taken steps to try and help those impacted by the storm. Late fees for February water bills have been waived due to the emergency. Also those with high bills due to leaks can request that the February 2020 bill amount be used instead of the amount from February 2021. The corporation has already relieved more than $10,000 worth of bills due to this adjustment.

For more information see the website at wimberleywatersupplycorp.com.