"Power outages are just the start. Aging policies and infrastructure are making drinking water vulnerable to extreme weather."
"At first, Amanda Fuller thought she was one of the lucky ones. Then the water stopped running.
As Texas started dipping into single-digit temperatures overnight Sunday, power companies began instituting blackouts across the state, but Fuller's home just outside Austin stayed warm and bright. On Monday, though, as she was fixing a mid-morning a snack for her two children, ages one and six, the water from the tap suddenly “went to a trickle within a few seconds and was gone,” she said. It turned out the freeze had caused several water mains to break and disrupted power to the city’s primary water treatment plant.
The family had a small stockpile of water intended to get them through summer heat blackouts, but not nearly enough for what turned out to be a five-day ordeal. On Wednesday, they decided to fill their bathtub with snow to use for flushing the toilet. To replenish their drinkable supply, they melted snow in the slow cooker and on their grill, boiling the meltwater and then running it through a coffee filter to get rid of impurities. “We kind of had our own little water treatment plant in the kitchen,’’ Fuller recalled. But the process was laborious. The snow was powdery and didn’t yield much liquid. Filling just one water jug could take three or four hours."
Leslie Kaufman and Kim Chipman report for Bloomberg Green February 24, 2021.
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