CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Cafeteria workers at Agua Dulce ISD took precautions while preparing lunch for students and used bottled water to wash dishes on Monday, since a water boil alert had been declared last week.
On Thursday, a 63,000-gallon water storage tank south of Robstown collapsed, leading to the water boil advisory. The entire system quickly ran out of water and there was nothing left to boil for the thousands of western Nueces County South Texas Water Authority customers.
Agua Dulce ISD Superintendent Jimmy Padilla said the district shut down school on Friday because of the notice and used it as a day for the custodial crew to do a deep cleaning of the campuses.
"We were able to come in and do disinfecting around the campus for our students, but we were also ready to prepare for the following week so that in case this water boil lasted a little bit longer, we had a plan of action," he said.
The district bought water bottles for cafeteria workers to wash dishes with and the schools were also supplied with water.
Later Monday morning the water boil was lifted, but by 4 p.m. the TCEQ reissued the alert for Agua Dulce until it can do further tests on the water.
"It’s an older system and so having redundancies so you can turn off valves and get water to certain parts of the system is important, that’s built into some areas but not every area," South Texas Water Authority General Manager John Marez said.
Lalo’s Mini-Mart in town was able to stay open and feed the hungry workers who love to eat there. Dacia Hernandez, a cook who helps man the kitchen told 3NEWS it was tough not having any water, but they dealt with it.
”We saved some water the day before we were notified and we just saved some water to rinse," she said. "The county provided some water for us so that helped us a little bit and we just got through it."
Marez pointed out that residents need to keep a supply of water on hand just in case.
"Heed the government's warnings when they tell you to have at least three days of water on hand cause you have to be prepared for the unexpected," he said.
Marez also told 3NEWS that the Texas Water Board had given the water authority $7.7 million to make improvements to the pump station where the tank collapsed on Thursday. Now, much of that money is expected to pay for the replacement of that tank.