Commerce City Manager Howdy Lisenbee appeared during KETR's June 30 morning broadcast of Newshour to discuss the current water situation in Commerce, where a boil water notice has been in effect since Thursday morning. Wednesday evening, a large leak in the city's main delivery line from Lake Tawakoni resulted in a major loss of water pressure and supply, and an interruption of normal service. Some key points from the dicussion:
- The boil water notice and usage restrictions could be lifted as soon as July 1, pending water quality test results from the State of Texas.
- The major leak that occured Wednesday night was an accelleration of a leak that had already been identified by the city. Work to replace that section of pipeline began two weeks ago. The worsening of the leak was not related to any work being done by contractors.
- The leak is near the State Highway 24 bridge over the South Sulphur River, immediately south of the Commerce city limits.
- Discoloration currently in the water is due to dissolved mineral solids that were dislodged by irregular water movement patterns following the leak and loss of pressure. The mineral content, while unsightly and perhaps odorous, does not pose a health risk. The city will flush out the discolored water once a temporary fix at the leak site is in place and acceptable levels of storage and pressure have been restored.
- Contractors are completing a temporary bypass pipeline, located above ground, that will allow for normal water delivery through a July. The permanent undergound pipeline could be completed some time in early August.
Audio transcript
Mark Haslett: Good to have you with us on this Friday morning here in Commerce, and we're going to do something a little bit different during this morning's presentation of Newshour. Currently live in the studio with us here at KETR is City of Commerce City Manager Howdy Lisenbee. He is a pretty busy fellow, he might not be the busiest man in Commerce, but he's probably in the top 25. And this, of course, all within the context of a boil water notice that is in effect until further notice in Commerce. We're under water use restrictions we’re asked to not water outdoors, and to limit indoor use to essential functions only. This, all as a result of a major leak that occurred at the city of Commerce’s, one of the largest main delivery lines, developed a major leak on Wednesday night. And ever since then, there's been a bit of a water crisis here in Commerce. And of course, people have questions. Howdy, compared to some city managers, Howdy is pretty comfortable answering questions. So we're fortunate to have a city manager who's willing to answer difficult questions. How are you? Good morning.
Howdy Lisenbee: Thank you for having me. I appreciate the opportunity to be here.
Haslett: Welcome to today's round of questioning. So, I'll do my best to represent the concerns of the public here on this forum and get some answers. And of course, human beings what being what we are, there are always going to be some rumors and we're going to try to shine a light on what's happening and not shine a light on anything that isn't happening. So for now, not every one -- of course KETR broadcasts far beyond the city limits of Commerce. We might have some folks out there in Bonham, Paris, Sulphur Springs, Emory, Royse City, Farmersville, Greenville, places where they might not be as up to speed on what's happening here. And even though those listeners are probably very glad that their water's fine, they might be wondering, well, what's going on - KETR keeps talking about all this water stuff in Commerce and I didn't hear the newscast, so I don't know what's up. So for the benefit of our out-of-town, folks, let's get everybody up to speed on what's happening.
Lisenbee: Well, the city of Abilene is -- excuse me, City of Commerce –
Haslett: I can tell you're tired.
Lisenbee: That's a Freudian slip from a from a former life.
Haslett: Howdy used to work in Abilene.
Lisenbee: The City of Commerce has a primary water supply line, where about 75 to 80% of our water comes into town from Lake Tawakoni to a water treatment plant that's about five miles out of town. The water leaves the water treatment plant, comes into town through a 14-inch water line. And that water line crosses the river at the Sulphur River just a couple miles south of town. And that water line from Tawakoni all the way into the city limits is a 70-year-old water line. It's a steel cylinder water line. And 70 years ago, when they installed that river crossing, they cut in a trench, put the steel water line down and then poured concrete and encased the entire line in concrete, which was the technology at that time and it's intended to protect the line from future erosion and future debris so that nothing hits the line and breaks it. And so that line held up for 70 years. Last summer at the river crossing, that line developed a slow water leak. It was not a significant volume of water. But we started looking to see what options we had. And so, since last summer to now, we've been working to get that slow leak, which slowly grew into a larger leak. And we needed to get that line fixed or replaced. Wednesday night, the leak accelerated and started losing water faster than we could produce at the time, and caused our water crisis.
Haslett: So this problem at this part of the city's delivery system had been identified some time back.
Lisenbee: Yes, and so when it first started as a slow leak, we started exploring any options we had to repair the existing line. The problem with it being encased in concrete is if you can expose the steel pipe, you can weld a patch on it, and it will hold and be fine. But you have to jackhammer the concrete off of the steel pipe in order to expose the pipe to weld the patch on. And what we found is the process of jackhammering the old concrete off was putting the steel pipe at risk of total failure. And since it was the only waterline into town, we did not want to take the risk of trying to remove that old concrete and unintentionally blow out the entire line. So we started exploring other options to repair. Every option to repair had some risk of blowing out the line, which would leave the city without any water supply options. And we were not willing to take that risk. So, we made the choice to just replace the entire river crossing with a new river crossing. You can't go buy those at Home Depot. So, we have to have engineers to get involved. There's engineering, there's surveying, there's easements, you’ve got to find the right contractors, all of that takes time. And so we actually started that construction project two weeks ago, two weeks before this problem hit, we had already started the new river crossing, but that was a six-week construction process. And so we were two weeks in, and the leak accelerated on us. And so we're currently installing an emergency bypass, which is a temporary solution. And once we finish the new river crossing, then this problem won't be an issue for us anymore.
Haslett: So this work to replace that entire section entirely -- you've realized that there's no way to fix it without there being a pretty good chance of just completely losing water. That work began about two weeks ago.
Lisenbee: Two weeks before this problem hit. Yeah, we were already on site. We had contractors here. We were already working. That actually worked out to our favor, because when this leak started accelerating, and we started losing significantly more water, we already had the contractors here in and on the ground that are experts in this field. And so they were able to quickly pull some new resources and and some new crews to do this temporary bypass.
Haslett: Was there any causal relationship between this work that began two weeks ago and the really bad leak that developed, or the –
Lisenbee: Acceleration?
Haslett: Thank you for that, yeah--
Lisenbee: The new river crossing is happening a little bit down the river. And so it's not right next to it, it's not the same hole. The equipment that is getting ready to do the New River Crossing is not in the vicinity of the existing leak. So there was no causal interaction between the crews and the accelerated leak.
Haslett: Okay, so let's get some clarity now about the restrictions that are currently in place. So if you could just outline briefly what restrictions are in place.
Lisenbee: The water conservation and water restriction plan that Commerce has allows for a couple of different types of restrictions. The most common is drought restrictions. If this region of Texas is in a drought, like levels of dropping and supplies are in question, then you can slowly began to increase water restrictions and ask people to change their water consumption habits. The other kind is an emergency water restriction, where we've had either a failure at the plant or some change in our production capacity to deliver water and that is a more 0- to-60 kind of water restriction. We're asking people to stop any outdoor irrigation or outdoor watering, any discretionary water use, we're discouraging and asking them to stop that. However, indoor water use, domestic needs, you should still be fine. We, it has been working, so we've seen water demand go down. Anytime you get into the hot days of summer, people use water more. It's just natural and normally, that's okay. But in our current condition we need people to back off of their water consumption until we can get this fixed.
Haslett: Now, it might vary from place to place across town. But how are we doing as far as water pressure across town?
Lisenbee: Right now we have about 14 feet of water, which is a positive level in our water towers. So the water tower, the purpose of the water tower is twofold -- to provide pressure in the system, and to provide emergency water for fighting fires. And so, Wednesday night when we drained the water towers, that's when the system lost pressure. And certain areas of town, we had no pressure, in some areas, we had low pressure. And so that happened Wednesday night, we've been able to get the water plant producing more water pushing it into town. And so we have positive elevations back in the tower, which means everybody in town should have positive water pressure.
Haslett: Do we have adequate water pressure for firefighters?
Lisenbee: At this point, yes, we do. But we have only 14 feet of water instead of full towers. And so the fire department has already got some mutual aid agreements with surrounding departments. If there were to be a structure fire, other departments would start bringing in tanker trucks to give us additional water supplies to fight those fires.
Haslett: Have there been any structure fire calls since this started late Wednesday?
Lisenbee: No, sir.
Haslett: Okay. Now, this is another thing that might vary from location to location around town. But I've noticed a couple of places where I've observed the water over the past 24 hours, it's pretty, kind of brown --
Lisenbee: Discolored?
Haslett: -- dirty. Yeah. So what's, what's that all about? And what are we to make of that?
Lisenbee: So the water that is supplied, has natural occurring minerals in it. Each year, we release a consumer confidence report that outlines the minerals and the chemicals that are existing and present within the water. Those minerals and chemicals do not pose health risk. But they're there. And so over the years, over the decades, those minerals will begin to coat the inside of the water lines, especially old concrete or old cast-iron lines, there'll be scaling and so that mineral accumulates over time. Then when you have a loss of water pressure, a change of water pressure off the water direction changes flow, some of that mineral accumulation will detach from the inside of the pipe, start getting back into the water, go back into the mixture and change the color of the water. So it's not pleasant to look at. Sometimes there might be a slight odor because the elevated mineral. But it's not a health risk. Because it's naturally occurring minerals that have just accumulated in the pipeline. We can flush -- under normal circumstances when we have discolored water, we can open up some fire hydrants flush that water out on top of the ground and get cleaner water back into that area of the distribution system. However, under our current conditions, with restrictions and us fixing this, this leak, we're not in a position where we can flush the system right now.
Haslett: So this discoloration, it is inorganic matter naturally occurring but inorganic, we're talking about the presence of dissolved minerals.
Lisenbee: Yes.
Haslett: Okay. And so do we about about how much pressure or how high do the levels have to be in the tanks before y'all would feel comfortable flushing out that discolored water that's flowing right now?
Lisenbee: At the current tank levels, I would be comfortable flushing the system if our supply line coming into town wasn't at risk of failure. And so once we've got this temporary bypass in place, and the leak at the river has stopped. We'll go back to normal operations, we'll lift water restrictions, and then we can start flushing select areas around town. But I want this bypass installed before we start sharing that action.
Haslett: Sure. Because if there's a fire in town, you don't want to be low, you don't want to be low on water because you're like, oh, this brown water was kind of ugly, we didn't want it. Brown water is better than no water if there's a fire.
Lisenbee: That is correct.
Haslett: So of course everybody, understandably, wants a timeline. And of course, we can't predict the future with complete accuracy, but we can project based on what we know. So this temporary fix -- so basically we're talking about two fixes for this problem. There's a temporary fix to get us to normal operating conditions where once we get the lab results back, we can lift the boil notice, maybe flush out that mineral-heavy water and have just kind of normal life. And then there will be the permanent fix in place later, when the entirely new permanent pipe is installed. So do we have any estimates from the folks who are out there, when the temporary fix might be finalized, or so to speak? In place.
Lisenbee: emergency crews mobilized last night, they worked through the night, they're the river crossing in there, they're still working today, they expect the temporary bypass to be installed and operating this evening or sometime tonight. So we would expect by tomorrow, that will be back to normal operating flows within our system. The boil water notice, we've pulled samples this morning and have already sent them to the lab. Lab results take 24 hours. So we expect clean lab results tomorrow morning as well. So hopefully we can announce lifting the water the boil water notice, and the water restrictions about the same time. We're hopeful for tomorrow.
Haslett: So fingers crossed, mid-morning on Saturday?
Lisenbee: Yes.
Haslett: Okay. We'll all keep our fingers crossed. And hope that's the case. And we'll be passing along information to everyone as soon as it becomes available to us here at KETR. In the meantime, the City of Commerce, you can follow their press releases on the City of Commerce Facebook page. And it can be a little bit confusing for folks, because of course, Facebook being the incredibly chaotic online space that it is, if you go on there, there's a number of pages that will say Commerce or Hunt County and so forth. The official city page, its name is City of Commerce, Texas. And if folks are struggling to find the official city page, I presume there's a link at the city's website to the Facebook page. So you can just go to the city website and then find the Facebook from there, correct?
Lisenbee: Commerce tx.org.
Haslett: Okay, so the City of Commerce website is commerce tx.org. If you go there, there is a link to the city's social media, including a link to the city's Facebook page. And that is City of Commerce, Texas, and the avatar, the icon, the profile pic, is a little picture of city hall with the clock. So you'll know that that's the right one. It's also the same one that we've been sharing at KETR, we've been sharing releases from the city at the KETR Facebook page, so you can also find a link to it there as well. So if we get the temporary system in place, by Saturday, as we expect, then we can expect to live in that world for how long before the permanent pipeline?
Haslett: the permanent installation right now is scheduled to be completed in about four weeks. So I would say in the July, sometime early August, we'll be looking to have that permanent pipeline brought online. So we'll live with the temporary bypass which is pipe laying on top of the ground. We'll be living with that for probably four weeks.
Haslett: Okay. And so not being an engineer, I don't off the top of my head know how it works when you go from having that setup to routing water through a brand new underground pipeline. So is there going to be an interruption period in August when that switch is made?
Lisenbee: Before today, I would have said yes, we were definitely going to have a water interruption when we switch over to the new pipeline. Because we've created this new temporary bypass that's changed the equation. We had not planned on having a temporary bypass while this project was going on. So I don't know yet if the temporary Bypass will allow us to avoid an interruption or not. We're talking that over with the contractors.
Haslett: Okay, so we've got about a month or maybe a little more to figure out the answer to that question.
Lisenbee: And we'll definitely let people know in advance if there's a risk of a temporary interruption in water service at that time. We'll know in advance before the time comes. We'll put information out as soon as we can.
Haslett: Water loss -- as far as losing water service at a home or business, for many it's an inconvenience. But for folks who are medically fragile, it can be a life or death thing. Of course we have a long term care facility here in Commerce, a couple, and not to mention the Hunt Regional facilities, the ER and now the brand new urgent care that's been opened as well as some private urgent care facilities and so forth. So we need water in order to provide medical services and cities are in a position where it's up to them to provide water. How much help does the state provide either materially or in some other fashion as far as helping municipalities to where the cities are not just stuck on their own, with this very heavy responsibility?
Lisenbee: The State of Texas through the Texas Department of Emergency Management, or TDEM, in the vernacular, has been incredibly helpful for us through this situation. They brought staff to Commerce that became part of our team, working in our emergency operations center, coordinating resources, finding other communities that have equipment that we need. So they've helped us arrange delivery of specialized equipment that we needed to make this project work. And they've helped us find water resources. The city of Coppell donated 45 pallets of water to our community, and so other cities have reached out and are helping provide equipment and water resources. We still have today hydration stations at the First Baptist Church near downtown and Mount Moriah out on the east side of town, where citizens can go drive through, get a case or a half a case of bottled water. If they don't have the ability to boil water, they can get water for consumption at these locations for free.
Haslett: And also, I believe, over on the west side of the A&M-Commerce campus?
Lisenbee: Yes, they opened one up yesterday evening. There's a drive through to get water there as well.
Haslett: Okay. And that location --
Lisenbee: Smith Hall.
Haslett: Smith Hall.
Lisenbee: That blue covered drive through thing,
Haslett: Okay, where the Northeast Texas Children's Museum used to be, or was it where the daycare used to be?
Lisenbee: That's where the water is stored. I don't know if they're handing it out there. If they're handing it out at Smith Hall, I'm not sure.
Haslett: Okay, well, I may have to go over there and check but we know for sure, First Baptist Church Commerce located right off the square, and then Mount Moriah, over there in the Norris neighborhood on the east side. Both of those locations offering free bottled water today. In about 20 minutes, they'll be starting. Ten o'clock until 4 p.m. today, and do we know whether there's plans to do that tomorrow?
Lisenbee: If we can lift the bowl of water notice then there will not be a need to continue to distribute water. So okay, it's contingent on us being able to lift the boil water notice.
Haslett: Okay, so those those locations might or might not be offering the same services tomorrow. If the boil water notice has been lifted, then they won't be distributing the free bottled water. But if you are in Commerce and you would like bottled water, you can stop by either of those locations. First Baptist Church in Commerce, located just southwest of the square over at 1401 Washington Street, and then Mount Moriah Temple Baptist Church 1205 Champion Lane at the intersection with MLK Drive, northeast Commerce. And both of those locations offering free bottled water today from 10 until 4, you do need proof of residency. And if you're a member of the university community that does not have a local ID on your driver's license, then you can use your Lion Card. And that'll get you a case of bottled water as well.
We're visiting with City of Commerce City Manager Howdy Lisenbee. A boil water notice is in effect in Commerce. Currently, we're also under restrictions, you're not supposed to water outside, as long as we have this situation going on. Indoor use limited to essential functions only. If you notice some discoloration in the water that is dissolved mineral content. It's not critters, it's not algae. It's minerals. And so that is a result of all of the water swishing around in the pipes doing things that it doesn't normally do as a result of the loss of pressure, as a result of the major leak that occurred Wednesday night. So just to recap the current situation here on Friday morning, we'll be monitoring and if everything goes according to plan, the boil notice could be lifted as early as Saturday morning. It's pending a lab result from state of Texas laboratories. If they give us the thumbs-up then we'll lift the boil notice. However, the voluntary usage restrictions I presume are going to be a guideline for folks even after that boil water notice is lifted?
Lisenbee: Once the temporary bypass is installed and working, we’ll lift the water restrictions.
Haslett: Okay, so we might have normal water situation here in Commerce for the Fourth of July holiday weekend.
Lisenbee: That's the plan. We're trying to get the holiday taken care of.
Haslett: For all of your folks who are coming into town and visiting, maybe won't have to do a sponge bath. You know, that would that would definitely be nice, if you got house guests. House guests can be a handful as it is, and we don't want them, you know, smelling bad.
Lisenbee: We had a local church reach out, they had planned on having a baptism service on Sunday. We told them to proceed, they’d be fine.
Haslett: Okay. Or maybe the immersion folks would have to get on board with the sprinkling just for the weekend. So Howdy, is there anything else that you'd like to pass along to the public, as long as we're here live on the radio talking about all this?
Lisenbee: I do want to take this opportunity to recognize some of the resources that have come into our community to help us pull out of this emergency. Hayter engineering is out of Paris, Texas, they do most of the engineering work for our water and sewer systems. And they've been phenomenal, through this emergency to arrange for permits, and all the engineering side that we need for this quick fix. Our specialty contractor is Insituform. They're the contractors that have already been on site, getting ready to install our permanent river crossing. And they had connections with an emergency contractor called Ridgeline. And so those crews have been on site working on our behalf to keep our community flowing with water. And we're incredibly grateful for their services. Also, I'm thankful for our public works department that had been working incredibly long hours, and quite a bit of heat, and our emergency services, operators, police and fire both. They've been out serving and protecting our community. And we want to recognize the work that they do.
Haslett: And we've managed to get through this situation with only the necessary amount of mayhem, I suppose. We haven't had any fire calls, thank goodness, and we haven't had any other leaks anywhere else. And so just a little bit of background and not to throw absent people under the bus, but, you've got a 70 year old waterline out there. How did it come to y’all’s attention that it needed attention?
Lisenbee: Well, the waterline, any waterline that's, that's greater than 50 years old, all contingent on soil conditions, but any water line that's over 50 years old, you anticipate that you're going to have increased incidences of water leaks. And so we have water leaks along that raw water transmission line, between here and Tawakoni, usually a couple times a year, and our crews get notified that there's water on the ground that wasn't there before. We're typically pretty quick to show up, dig out the line, get it fixed and keep water flowing. But the waterline at the river, we began to notice water pouring off the bank and down into the river when we were in dry conditions. And so when the river is not flowing, or it's abnormally dry, and we see water flowing, where it wasn't flowing before we investigate, and usually we'll find the leak somewhere.
Haslett: And so it was part of your normal review of the city's infrastructure that you brought that to your attention. And so the crews had been out there. And I guess it was indeed quite fortunate that work had already begun. And we already had these folks in town.
Lisenbee: When you have a system that's aged like hours, I'm not saying 70 years old is old, because there might be people that take exception to that. But infrastructure as it ages, you have to start paying attention to where are the potential points of failure, and then hopefully in advance, rehabbing or replacing those points of failure. And so within the past two years, we've invested about one and a half million dollars in the water treatment plant, because there were several potential points of failure at the plant. That project is wrapping up construction. We replaced the entire electrical system at the raw water pump station at Lake Tawakoni that was a potential point of failure. We replaced that entire electrical system before any problems could manifest. That was about $900,000. And so as we are aware of and identify potential points of failure, we start working on projects to rehab or replace them in advance. We didn't get the river crossing replaced before the leak became extraordinary.
Haslett: You were just about a month late.
Lisenbee: We were a month late.
Haslett: We have been visiting with City of Commerce City Manager Howdy Lisenbee, discussing the current situation with the water in Commerce and we definitely are looking forward to -- it looks like we might be back in business in about 24 hours. We hope. In the meantime, you can get updated and share with your friends and neighbors: The City of Commerce website is commerce tx.org. The City of Commerce is on Facebook at City of Commerce, Texas. KETR is online@ketr.org and our Facebook page KETR 88.9 FM, you can follow all the action there as well. And once we have updates, we'll be passing them along to the public of course, and the way to the fastest way really is to follow the City of Commerce Facebook page.
Lisenbee: It is and we also have the IRIS alert system for emergency notifications. You can sign up through the city's website to get phone calls, text or email alerts for critical updates.
Haslett: I am very glad that you mentioned that because it had slipped my mind but that's a pretty important thing. Not everybody is on social media. There are some folks out there who are you know, wise enough perhaps to steer clear of that minefield, so if Facebook is not your thing, in addition to the city's website and KETR.org You can sign up for those IRIS alerts and that sends texts to your phone and you also get --
Lisenbee: Phone calls, texts, or emails. Or all three.
Haslett: Okay, or all three and you can sign up for those alerts at Commercetx.org. You're with listener supported at 88.9 KETR in Commerce. We're going to rejoin BBC World Service Newshour in progress. Coming up in about 10 minutes here on KETR, it's the Texas Standard, live from Austin.