Round Rock avoids water boil during recent winter storms

While other cities had to boil their water or didn’t have water at all, Round Rock was able to keep its water operations going when disaster struck.

ROUND ROCK, Texas - The city of Round Rock shed light on how they were able to keep their water services up and running during the severe winter storms.

"All of our water customers remained in service. We’re very fortunate for that. We did not have any boil water notices. Every city of round rock water customer had water the entire time," said director of utilities Michael Thane.

While dozens of cities like Austin, Georgetown, and San Marcos had to boil their water or didn’t even have water at all, Round Rock was able to keep their water operations going when disaster struck. "It goes back 15 years as far as planning, investing in infrastructure as those things really set us up," said Thane.

Thane said one of the key investments was a generator the city purchased. Another was planning ahead when forecasts predicted the storms coming.

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"One of the first things we did was we made sure our entire water system was filled up so we filled up all the elevated storage tanks, the ground storage tanks and filled up the system because we did not know for sure what was gonna happen with the winter storm event," said Thane.

Though it wasn’t all smooth sailings, according to Thane. The icy conditions made it difficult for crews to get to the generator to refuel it and if the power outages lasted longer than they did, it would have been a different story for Round Rock.

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From water damage, to still not having water, Austin residents are still feeling the impacts from the winter storm.

"We were getting dangerously close with our water system, But we were able to pull through and able to keep everybody in the city of Round Rock with good clean water which was really high and I’m glad we were able to be successful with that," said Thane.

Round Rock provides water to more than 140,000 people. Thane said he can’t stress how important it was their city invested in their water system over the years.