Storm leads to water supply boil orders

By Larry Tucker
editor@wood.cm
Posted 2/25/21

The epic ice and snow storm which covered most of Texas caused water problems throughout Wood County.

Quitman City Administrator Rodney Kieke reported city employees and staff stayed busy all week monitoring the situation.

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Storm leads to water supply boil orders

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The epic ice and snow storm which covered most of Texas caused water problems throughout Wood County.

Quitman City Administrator Rodney Kieke reported city employees and staff stayed busy all week monitoring the situation.

“The city didn’t experience any interruptions in our water service. We did, however, have quite a few privately owned pipes break at businesses and residences. Our city activity during the time was to look through neighborhoods and businesses to see if we could spot water running, which we did, and found quite a few and shut those off individually and notified the owners that it needed to get fixed,” Kieke noted. “We had a round the clock 24-hour watch out at our water plant, meaning we had somebody on staff 24 hours watching the activity level. We could tell if more water was going out than we were sending to town, and anytime that happened we all got on the road and drove around trying to spot the places we were losing water. Some of our staff was on call in case we had a line break. I drove every street in town about 10 times. It was easy to spot when there was snow on the ground but as soon as it started melting, it was much more challenging. At that point, we were having to go to the meters to see if they were running.” 

Bright Star Water-Salem Special Utility District serves Alba, parts of western Wood County and Rains County. As of Monday, the service was operating under emergency water conditions and asking for water use to be limited. On their website, they also were asking people to check all indoor and outdoor plumbing for any leaks. The boil water notice was still in effect.

Bright Star Manager Wanda Gaby said, “We are doing OK, but we still have portions of our water system that either we have water leaks or our customers have water leaks. We are still having to turn the water off some during the day and at night, but that is on the Rains (County) side. All of our Wood County customers have full water service and we will lift the water notice on (Feb. 24).” 

Fouke Water Supply manager Kristy Hirsch reported they had a power outage last Thursday night, which was corrected.

“Wood County Electric was great, they had us back up in about 45 minutes. We did great,” Hirsch said.

As of Feb. 22, these areas using Fouke were subject to a boil water notice: All customers around Lake Hawkins, FM 14 south of FM 49 to FM 1795, FM 2869 and county roads off of FM 2869, FM 2659 and county roads off of FM 2659, FM 2911 and county roads off of FM 2911, Brookhaven, Country Trails, FM 3056 and county roads off of FM 3056, FM 778 south of Macedonia Church to Hwy. 80 and county roads in this area and Hwy. 80 west of CR 3836.

This notice does not affect customers on FM 49 or any county roads off of FM 49, north of FM 49, FM 312 and Little Hope area.

Samples were taken Monday and sent to the lab.  Once they receive the results from the lab, a rescind notice will be distributed in the same manner the boil water notices were given.  

Lake Fork Water Supply Corp. did not have the problems to which some other water corporations had been subjected. 

Rachel Moore of Lake Fork Water Supply said, “We survived the storm. We had very minimal damage. We never lost pressure and therefore, we did not have to order a boil water notice.”

Boil orders also had to be issued by Ramey, Shirley, New Hope and Holiday Villages water supplies.