Pipe break prompts Stage 6 water restrictions in Blanco

City of Blanco in Stage 6 water restrictions

A pipe break caused water supply to the City of Blanco to stop on Friday, triggering Stage 6 water restrictions.

BLANCO, Texas - In the middle of the summer months in blazing hot temperatures, nearly 2,000 Blanco residents placed on the most severe water restriction Friday.

"It’s not good, it’s not good at all. It’s the most extreme stage you can go to better than running our entire system dry, which if we had done that again theoretically people would have been turning on their taps, and nothing would have come out," said Mayor Mike Arnold.

The urgent need to conserve water was not caused by a drought, but a mechanical problem.

"Our water comes out of Canyon Lake, and there is no restriction at this point on the amount they can pull out to Canyon Lake, so effectively if their supply issues don’t have to do with the drought, they have equipment problems in their system and that’s why they had to restrict flow. And yes, the drought is affecting people's water usage, but our problem it’s not drought related it’s directly related to supply issues from our supply company," Mayor Arnold said.

With only 24 hours of water left, the mayor enforced the stage 6 restriction on Friday, July 14.

"We jump straight to stage 6 and shut down all the major industrial users in town including the Real Ale Brewery, they are the number 3 independent brewer in Texas. We had to shut them down over the weekend," said Mayor Arnold.

"We have worked very close with the city, and we were informed of them moving to Stage 6 on Friday morning. We were able to wind down productions. We stayed in close contact with the Mayor over the weekend, and they were able to turn our water back on this morning," says brewery owner Brad Farbstein.

As the taps were temporarily turned off, the brewery experienced a loss in revenue that they hope to gain back over the next few days.

"The city did everything they could to make sure that our needs were taken into consideration. We never want to make beer in advance of the community having water. So, we want to make sure that we are good stewards of the community that we are in", said Farbstein.

According to Mayor Arnold, there is a plan in place for residents if the water company is unable to provide an adequate supply of water.

"We have already set up emergency distribution point in town with bottled water, as we speak, setting up a holding tank there, so we can truck water and give water to our citizens. We’ve also developed a list of all the shut ins in town, with volunteers lined up to deliver water to them. We hope it won’t come to that, but we’re prepared in case it does," said Mayor Arnold

All residents are being asked to conserve water and are only able to water livestock.

"I do think this is something that we obviously need to keep our eyes on because this will not be the first, nor the last time that water will be an issue out here in the Hill Country," said Farbstein.