North Alamo Water Supply issues boil water notice amid mechanical issues
North Alamo Water Supply issued a boil water notice for some of its customers on Wednesday.
They say there was a mechanical issue that happened on Tuesday that caused low pressure and outages. The issue is fixed, but the water supplier says it could be a bit longer before water pressure returns to normal.
But some people say they've been having issues for weeks, and the water supplier placing part of the blame on the heat.
North Alamo Water Supply customer Homero Balsaldua felt relief as his water pressure returned to normal on Wednesday. He's hoping it stays that way since he's been dealing with little to no water pressure for about three weeks.
"We would have water, say, a couple of hours in the morning and a couple of hours at night, in between just a trickle. With that, you can kind of plan when to wash clothes, but then it went down to just a trickle the following week and just recently since the weekend we had hardly any water at all," Balsaldua said.
Balsaldua lives in a senior citizen community in the Edinburg area. He says he's been having to shower at the homes of relatives because of the low water pressure. He even tried contacting North Alamo Water Supply.
"We had some mechanical issues that occurred at one of our plants that is served by one of the irrigation districts and when they were making the repairs, our reservoir ran down to critical levels, so we had to cut back on our pressure and our system was depleted, so our customers felt that low pressure," Assistant General Manager Robert Rodriguez said.
As for the low water pressure issues, before Tuesday, North Alamo Water Supply said the heat and demand are to blame.
"Right now, with the weather the way it is, at 108 and 104 degrees, they are still going to feel low pressures at times when they all come home and all hit our systems at once. So we ask them to please conserve water as much as possible because we are at a stressful time with this weather," Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez says customers should try to conserve water as much as possible between 6 p.m. to 10 p.m., otherwise the water pressure will continue to be low at times throughout the entire summer.
"That's what happens to our water plants. They all get hit at once between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. Everyone coming home, everyone wanting to use water, everyone wanting to water their plants or whatever they might be doing," Rodriguez said.
North Alamo Water Supply says its customers are used to water pressure being from 50 to 85 PSI. Right now, because of the weather and over usage, customers can expect the minimum PSI, which is 30 to 40.
The water provider says they do have plans to expand plants around town, so that millions more gallons of water can be utilized.
"We have a reservoir that we are building that is going to hold about 106 million gallons of water or so in there. That's going to help us have more water in that area," Rodriguez said. "We are building a well, so that we can run more reverse osmosis to our customer using brackish groundwater. Those technologies are the ones we're looking into to help supplement the water we're getting from the Rio Grande."
These new expansions are set to be complete sometime next year. For now, the water supplier asks customers to avoid washing cars, watering your lawn and washing clothes during peak hours from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.
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