AUSTIN, Texas — Austin Water discovered a water quality issue at the Ullrich treatment plant around 8 a.m. Saturday morning.
Notifications about a city-wide boil water notice went out to customers nearly 12 hours later. It's still unclear why officials waited.
"I did get a text about it, and then I got an email and a phone call," said Austin resident, Lorie Knobloch.
Austin Water serves about one million people and represent about 250,000 customer accounts. In a statement from Austin Water, the utility said it notified customers through My ATX Water customer portal, as well as the Warn Central Texas notification system.
Customer contact information that is provided during setup for water accounts is automatically loaded in Austin Water's customer portal for emergency notifications. Of the 122,640 SMS text notifications sent to valid numbers, about 97% were delivered.
"To complete all the phone calls, get all the text messages out, it can take up to an hour for the information to get out when we're setting it city-wide. When we're sending it just localized, it's very, very quick within a matter of minutes," said Bryce Bencivengo with the City of Austin, Homeland Security and Emergency Management.
Bencivengo told KVUE that if residents did not receive notifications, it's because their home address isn't registered.
"I'm registered on my personal phone, my work phone and my email. So that's three contacts just for me as one person," said Bencivengo.
To register your address for regional location alerts, city officials are encouraging residents to sign up at WarnCentralTexas.org.
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