City Council meets Thursday, March 4, to take up additional relief measures for people impacted financially by Winter Storm Uri. These include $5 million to both Austin Water and Austin Energy to fund the Plus-One payment assistance programs at each utility, which provide bill relief to customers experiencing financial hardship. Council expanded the program in April 2020 in response to the unfolding COVID-19 pandemic.
Another proposal from Austin Energy would waive its $20 service initiation fee for new customers, so that those forced to relocate due to storm damage can avoid the fee. That ordinance would also waive a $10 service charge on February bills for all customers. Together, those relief measures will cost the utility about $4.7 million and will be in effect until at least April 3. Austin Water will also adjust its billing, using historical averages for customers’ water usage instead of actual data from February to offset days of dripping faucets. The fee for emergency shut-offs of water service will also be waived; all told, these relief measures will cost Austin Water about $3.5 million.
With thousands of Austin residents still without water and others struggling to repair damage from last week’s historic winter storms, Council emphasized at its special called meeting Feb. 25 that the crisis is not yet behind us. “We’re not even at the recovery stage yet,” Mayor Pro Tem Natasha Harper-Madison said at the meeting. “We’re still trying to stabilize.”
Austin Water Director Greg Meszaros estimated that the residents of between 200 and 400 apartment complexes throughout the city did not have water service, due to plumbing damage on the private property beyond the water meter. The scale of freeze damage to water infrastructure dwarfs that typically seen by AW over an entire winter, Meszaros said. An unknown number of single-family homes have sustained similar damage, adding to the long list of Texas properties in need of plumbing repairs in the weeks ahead – enough to ensure a shortage in materials and labor that will prolong the time it takes to get pipes fixed.
The storms showed that Council, City Hall, and AW do not have robust systems in place to gather the on-the-ground intelligence needed in such a disaster at an appropriate scale. An expansive resolution, approved unanimously on Thursday, directs staff to respond on many fronts, one of which is simply to develop a “centralized list” of places in Austin and Travis County where residents don’t have safe water. That list will help the city better coordinate delivery of water in bulk as well as bottles to those who may need it for the next several weeks, not only for drinking but also cleaning and bathing.
Council Member Greg Casar suggested Austin Water could set up tanks in the parking lots of impacted complexes to provide access to bulk water where and when it’s needed, along with directing residents to water-distribution “pods” established by the city and other agencies. In response, AW has converted fire hydrants at about 50 apartment complexes into water distribution sites and is sending tanker trucks to another dozen where the hydrant-mounted systems could not be accommodated. Additionally, Austin Community College‘s Northridge campus at 11928 Stonehollow Dr. is a mass water distribution site from 9am to 5pm, March 1-8. People going to the ACC campus should bring their own containers to fill with water.
The scale of freeze damage to water infrastructure dwarfs that typically seen by Austin Water over an entire winter, said AW Director Greg Meszaros.
The placeholder resolution brought forward by staff was fleshed out with amendments from Mayor Steve Adler and CMs Casar, Ann Kitchen, Mackenzie Kelly, Paige Ellis, Kathie Tovo, and Alison Alter. It now also directs staff to craft a plan to provide short-term housing for people displaced by storm damage, as well as more direct assistance to those who need home repairs. Austin Water has already earmarked $1 million from its budget to help with this effort.
Council also approved an ordinance to waive permit requirements and fees that may be needed for some repairs, like plumbing or tree removal. Assistant City Manager Rodney Gonzales, whose portfolio includes the Development Services Department, encouraged people in need to not wait for permits to be issued, but to begin work as soon as they can and file for permits within five business days. These waivers will also allow plumbers who aren’t fully certified to take on jobs – a move, also authorized statewide by Gov. Greg Abbott, which would hopefully help ease the plumber shortage. The waivers expire on March 31, but could be extended. Another ordinance waived all late fees associated with utility bills.
Council made clear these were just the first steps to provide relief and to seek accountability from all levels of government. Tovo’s amendment calls for oversight hearings into how city departments and other agencies both responded to the emergency and communicated with residents. As the Chronicle went to press, a hearing was underway in a joint meeting of Council’s AE and AW oversight committees (the first of which comprises the whole Council but is chaired by CM Leslie Pool; Kitchen chairs the five-member AW committee). Most of the hearing is focused on what went wrong – ascertaining a clearer timeline of events and exploring how to protect more customers in the future – but some discussion is planned for additional relief measures.
At the prior meeting Thursday, both Alter and Kitchen asked staff to look for ways to better inform Austinites of such an impending disaster or where to find resources should one occur in the future. City Manager Spencer Cronk, who weathered a rough patch with the Eastside CMs last week over his perceived unresponsiveness to the urgent community needs prompted by the crisis, needs to report back on his progress before Council’s March 25 meeting, though staff expects to be able to provide updates this week.
In non-storm business, Harper-Madison is bringing a resolution to the dais that would acknowledge “the City’s role in disenfranchising Black Austinites through past discrimination, urban renewal policies, and the 1928 Master Plan.” It would also direct staff to partner with UT-Austin and Huston-Tillotson University to explore the “economic value of the direct, indirect, intentional, and unintentional harm caused through economic, health, environmental, criminal injustice, and other racial disparities and declination of resources by the City.” The resolution also directs staff to create a “Black Embassy” in East Austin, possibly on city-owned property, which would serve as a hub for connecting Black-led businesses with resources and support from existing city programs. Cronk is directed to report back to Council with recommendations by Aug. 1.
This article appears in March 5 • 2021.