The sorest and most important subject in West Texas, water, was the topic of a noon Tuesday panel discussion at UTPB’s College of Engineering Resources & Facilities Building, where the painful outage that left 160,000 Odessans without water for 48 hours in mid-June last year got special attention.
Ector County Judge Dustin Fawcett, one of the panelists at the Texas Tribune-sponsored event, said the outage “was not unique in the fact that we saw a leak because we see those all the time.
“In the past two years we have had over 90,” Fawcett said. “What was unique was that we were not able to quarantine the leak because the valve was not functioning. Had we quarantined the leak, we would have been fine.
“We had to flush the system and put water back into it to make sure folks could safely bathe. The situation was cumbersome and it really challenged us. It was a county-wide problem.”
Odessa was without water for several days last June when a 24-inch water line sprung a leak at 42nd and San Jacinto Streets. Crews could not immediately isolate and repair the leak because a 69-year-old valve was faulty. The City of Odessa was forced to shut down the water plant and most of the city went without water for several days. Some parts of the city were under a boil notice during that week until the plant was flushed and the valve was repaired.
Tuesday’s event was held under the auspices of the Texas Water and Energy Institute, which is housed in UTPB’s engineering building, the discussion was on “Broken Pipes: How We Can Keep Water Flowing Safely in West Texas.” About 40 people attended the event that was also streamed online.
Fawcett said one cheering aspect of the emergency “was the tremendous amount of support that we got from the public.
“We had bottled water stations throughout the county and in no case was there a lack of hydration,” he said. “It could have been much worse.”
The event began with a videotaped interview of Zavala Public Works Director Tom Bailey by Tribune Regional Editor Nic Garcia with Bailey viewing problems with aged infrastructure and sparse funding in his small Rio Grande Valley town.
Carlos Rubinstein, an Austin-based consultant who is a former chairman of the Texas Water Development Board and former commissioner of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, said he became well-versed in water issues as a native of the Rio Grande Valley, where unscrupulous land speculators in the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s developed irrigation districts and rudimentary subdivisions called “colonias” that lacked roads and basic water infrastructure.
Rubinstein said conditions have been greatly improved in the Valley since it has become the fastest-growing area of the state, but more advances must be made. He said statewide planning is good, but there has been less progress in putting those plans into effect.
“We’re not great at implementing projects yet, but we’re getting better,” Rubinstein said.
The other speakers were Dr. Melanie Barnes, a senior research associate at the Texas Tech University Department of Geosciences in Lubbock, and Oscar Martinez, manager of grants and strategic initiatives for the City of El Paso.
