The city’s water treatment plant returned to the Internet around 8 a.m. Wednesday, and utility officials said it may take 12 to 14 hours for the “recharge” process, in which workers slowly add water to the system to ensure that there are no other leaks. The taps of the city’s 165,000 customers lost their pressure or dried up completely after the 24-inch (61 cm) network broke on Monday afternoon, according to the city’s social networking pages. Temperatures were expected to approach 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) later Wednesday, as Texas – like most of the United States – experienced extremely hot and humid conditions. And while Odessa usually has hot weather in June, the break time has made it harder to cope with this week’s heat. Resident Nikki Friday told the Associated Press that the city supplies bottled water and that people with wells provide neighbors with tap water. He also said tankers have been parked around the city to fill buckets with water. “Drinking water was not a problem,” he said on Friday. “We just need water to get back into our daily lives and the community.” Odessa resident Lynda Wright has said that water has not been lost throughout the city for more than five decades. She said she got water and ice from Midland, a 15-minute drive from her home. Wright said her family had stored drinking water in jugs they used to wash their hands and brush their teeth, and that her family connected to her home in a well on her property to provide water for rinsing. the toilets. “We just dropped a tire on the line (water),” he said. Wright said she noticed the water started running again around noon, but that the pressure had not yet returned to normal. The city, located about 330 miles (530 kilometers) west of Dallas, planned to distribute water to Ector County Colosseum residents as well as deliver water to nursing homes. Water tankers have been strategically placed around the city to respond to any fires, said Phillip Urrutia, the city’s deputy director. “It simply came to our notice then. “It’s a cast iron pipe, so they are usually more susceptible to breakage than other new technologies like the PVC pipe that goes into the ground.” Wright said she hopes the city will act to prevent another water emergency “I just hope they learned that we need to get in there, we need to check these lines and repair those that show signs of aging and wear,” he said.
