City of Midland: Boil water notice has been lifted

Midland Mayor Patrick Payton and other city officlas provide an update earlier this week on the city-wide water boil notice.

The boil water notice that has been in effect since Thursday has been lifted, according to the City of Midland.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality confirmed City of Midland customers no longer need to boil water before drinking, cooking and making ice. The boil water notice had been in effect for around 36 hours.

The next steps, according to the city, are:

The City of Midland provided the following specifics on the events that led to the boil water notice.

"The incident started on Tuesday afternoon when a 30-inch water main was damaged during construction causing the main to rupture. Given the size and type of pipe along with the magnitude of damage it required specialized repair assistance from outside of the city. The damage resulted in the loss of approximately 6.5 million gallons of water. Crews swiftly shut the main line down.

"The loss put the city system in a water deficit, but not to levels that pressures were below fire standards. Employees at the water treatment plant worked through the rest of Tuesday and Wednesday to get the system recharged with treated water. Unknown to our plant operators, while working on this issue, the automatic level indicator for the reservoir suffered a mechanical error. The reservoir was drawn past its low intake point, allowing the pipe intake to pull in water mixed with a large amount of lake debris that settled at the bottom of the reservoir. The operators were focused on water levels in the tanks and distribution system and did not notice that dirty water had entered the treatment process and overloaded to the point where a plant shutdown was necessary.

"The result was a loss of flow into the city distribution system and caused two treatment technique violations. Previously, when the plant needed to be shut down, the city could increase the water flow from our T-Bar well field. However, due to where the line was damaged on Tuesday the City was not able to access T-Bar as a backup water source. Early Thursday, emergency contractors arrived to work on the ruptured 30-inch main while city employees worked to find solutions to get the plant back operational. Both projects took longer than anticipated.

"Unfortunately, water levels lowered to the point where a part of the City was without water or had very low water pressure causing a boil water notice. Staff continued working on the two-prong problem for the next 30 hours and succeeded in getting the plant back to state standards, the 30-inch main into operation, and the T-Bar source was able to provide water to the city."