Now Houston Has Problem With Water

Do we have an alt-energy problem Houston? City had to issue a boil water notice following power outages to water treatment plants? Why doesn’t progressive city order 2.2 million folks to just drink & bath in Perrier?

The Houston Chronicle reports that Houston’s Public Works told its citizens on Sunday that the city’s water pressure had dropped “below the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s required minimum of 20 PSI during a power outage at the East /Water Purification Plant.” So, the agency said, it was naturally best to bring any tap water to a boil “for at least two minutes” before using it, but not to drink it whilst still bubbling. And, oh, for those without power, they were advised to use bottled water, i.e., assuming the run on bottled water at the local grocers hadn’t empty the shelves. Even the city’s schools were ordered closed on Monday.

Fortunately, the state’s Gov. Abbott jumped in to provide technical support quickly and the power outage was short-lived. Now, there’s been a Texas-sized controversy over the cause of recent water shortages in the wake of big winter storms there and whether the state’s headlong rush into changing its power grid so’s to rely more heavily on wind & solar energy sources. Subsequent investigations suggested that failure to winterize all power sources most likely caused the grid failure in those earlier instances. Whatever. You’d think the government planners tasked with ensuring reliable energy in our ordinary daily lives, let alone in a crisis, would have proper back up plans in place. And, isn’t Houston’s latest boil water advisory yet another wake up call to “not be so woke rather than sorry”?

Davd Soul