Boil Water Advisory

Reporting by the Houston Chronicle reveals city officials scrambled to respond to the two-day boil water notice that left schools closed in November.

The boil water notice affected millions of Texans and led to a two-day shutdown of area schools and disrupted local business. Water experts say the incident should direct cities to look at their own water containment equipment and consider possible upgrades.

The outage left about 165,000 people without water in Odessa and some surrounding areas. It has been attributed to a main line break in the city’s aging water system and comes amid a dayslong heat wave.

Officials haven’t specified what caused the break, but say the broken line is about 60 years old.

As Austinites emerged last week from three days of having to boil their tap water before drinking it, they and their elected officials had questions. Most notably: What happened?