One year after boil water advisory, Austin learning from what went wrong

The sound of the rushing brown water on Lady Bird Lake is unforgettable if you lived in Austin one year ago, when flooding from the Llano River moved downstream, overwhelming Austin Water plants, and leading to the first ever city-wide boil advisory. Exactly one year later, city departments are still making changes to prevent a repeat of this.

It has been exactly one year since the boil advisory. Earlier this month, city officials released a report that evaluated how departments responded to the flooding event last year.

The report recommended 161 corrective actions split across numerous city departments.

Austin Water has updated internal procedures and is working on implementing new polymer-based treatment technologies at all three of their drinking water plants.

Both during and after the flood event, Austin Water worked with Desmond Lawler and Lynn Katz - both of whom are engineering professors at the University of Texas - to evaluate what went wrong, and what solutions would help.

"It was the worst event ever," Lawler said. "The city's water plants were not capable of handling that kind of water quality."

Lawler says the polymer-based solution will go a long way in preventing the spike in turbidity water in Austin saw last October.

"You take a whole lot of little particles, make them form a much bigger form, make them stick to one another, and get it to where it's big enough to settle out or it's easy to capture and filter. The operators will have to work hard to get control, but they'll have ways to do that now," Lawler said.

The Austin Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management has already completed some of the recommended action.

Chief among this department's recommendations was improving staffing, training, and communication among departments both in the city and county.

"We learned we needed to conduct more training, have a deeper bench of people who are prepared to respond to our Emergency Operations Center, and that know what to do once they're in the room," said Bryce Bencivengo.

Most of the corrective actions are either currently being worked on or set to be worked on.

The study also lists things city departments did right.

Bencivengo says their department was lauded for their water distribution plan. Before the floods, the city didn't have such a plan, but did have one for distributing vaccines in emergency situations. Once the boil advisory went into effect, they modified the vaccine plan to hand out bottled water.

Moving forward, city departments believe these improvements will help prevent anything close to last year's boil advisory.

"We're going to be better prepared, both for a boiled water notice - hopefully it'll never happen again - but for any emergency this community can face," Bencivengo said.

The Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management recommends everybody to take the following measures when preparing for an emergency:

• Make a plan - know what you and your family will do in an emergency, and practice this plan
• Build a kit - pack enough food, water, clothes, medications, and other basic necessities that could last 72 hours
• Know your neighbors - this helps with communication when an emergency is in progress or going to happen.
• Stay informed - sign up for emergency alerts from Warn Central Texas