It has been a long few days and I hope each of you have managed to stay dry and warm. My hope is that we are at the last of this weather and that the reports of warmer days are near. To keep you informed of our current status, the following is provided.
Water – Power Outages: Our Public Works team has been working hard to keep our water supply operating. This has been a real battle and one that has allowed the City of Van Alstyne to maintain beyond many of our neighbors. The battle with water pressure is directly related to power outages. Each time the power goes off, our well pumps shut down and freeze. We then scramble to place generators and heaters on the well heads to thaw them out. While this is happening, taps all across the city are dripping with our citizens hoping to avoid frozen water lines in individual homes. The net result, our water storage has dwindled, underground storage tanks have dropped to 5’ – 6’ with normal levels being 24’. This makes it difficult to pump water to our water tower and regulate water pressure. Currently, our water tower has 7’ of water and our pressure is dropping.
In the next few minutes we will issue a boil water notice. This will be sent out as “Code Red”. The cause is low pressure and we at this time do not intend to shutoff our water supply. We will continue operating on a single well, filling our underground storage then pumping the water to our tower to provide pressure. We do not expect our pressure to remain consistent nor do we expect the pressure to be normal until such time as we can fill our underground storage and charge our tower. This is a catchup situation and we are well behind. Once the power remains consistent, we can get the situation remedied.
We are currently in search of bottled water to make available to our citizens. Water, generators, heaters, are all in short supply. Once we have located water, we will notify the community.
Lane H. Jones – C.M.O.
City Manager, Van Alstyne, Texas