All Things Water

All Things Water

Written by Staff Friday, 13 June 2008

City of Austin water-related contacts

• Water Utility Outages/Emergency: 912-1000
  • The automated reporting system called PowerLink can route calls faster if the customer has the PowerLink number for the location experiencing the outage. The PowerLink number is the middle six digits of the City of Austin utility account number.
• Waste and wastewater problems: 972-1000
  • Citizens can report problems with stop-ups, manhole overflows, bad taste in water, water and fire hydrant leaks, water main breaks, overflows and water pressure. Once notified, an inspector investigates the seriousness of the problem. If it is determined to be a serious situation, it will be taken care of the same day; otherwise, it will be taken care of in the order it was called in.
• New Utility Service and Billing Questions (Austin Energy): 494-9400
  • The Call Center handles calls regarding electric, water and various other fees that may appear on the City of Austin utility bill. Information includes tips on efficient or safe usage of utilities, payment or billing options, consumption histories, billing or consumption troubleshooting and rates.
• Administrative Offices: 972-0101
• Involvement Opportunities: 972-0146
• Water Conservation: 974-2199
• Creek Drainage Complaints: 3-1-1
  • Report overgrown/trashed creeks and drainage areas to the Watershed Protection Department. The exact location of the problem is needed. An inspector will be sent to investigate the reported area. If the location is the responsibility of the private property owner, the owner will be contacted.
• Flooding Complaints: 3-1-1
  • Complaints about areas prone to flooding should be directed to the Watershed Protection Department. An inspector will visit the location and determine what might be done to cure the problem. These situations are often complex and may require a large amount of money to fix. Should the problem be of sufficient size and cost, it may require scheduling and funding as a Capital Improvement Project.

In case of flooding

In March, the city of Austin was recognized by the National Weather Service as one of four areas in Central Texas to be certified as “StormReady,” which means that the city has a plan in place to monitor storms and communicate with residents in case of flooding or other storm emergencies.

In case of an emergency, a staff of engineers that make up the Flood Early Warning System, read gauges throughout the city, work closely with the office of emergency management and evaluate historical data to predict how bad a situation is. “If they feel that roads need to be closed, which is the first thing that usually happens [during a storm] we have to close the low-water crossing,” said Stephanie Lott with the City of Austin’s Watershed Protection and Development Review. “We have the operations staff that can go out and do that. We have automatic gates at some of them, so some of them we’re just able to close from our office. And then we know, also, that there are various neighborhoods in town that are in the flood plains, so if the flooding got very severe–and this would be an unusual situation–we might need to evacuate the neighborhood, but we would be able to monitor the levels of the creeks and determine if that needed to happen.”

While it seems development would add an extra burden to floodplains, city requirements specify developers cannot add to the amount of flooding to the area, meaning flooding may continue but cannot increase because of the added development.

Austin Water Utility serves more than 850,000 residential and commercial customers and draws from the Colorado River into three water treatment plants that have a rated combined maximum capacity of 210 million gallons per day and a storage capacity of 167 million gallons.

Austin Water Utility customers receive drinking water from water treatment plants that rely on surface water from the Colorado River as it flows into Lake Austin and Town Lake. A fourth water treatment plant narrowly escaped being built in Northwest Austin’s Balcones Canyonlands Preserve. To avoid environmental and financial risks, the City of Austin decided to locate the new plant closer to Lake Travis at the southwest corner of RM 620 and Bullick Hollow Road.

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