The water utility made the announcement the morning of Feb. 22 after tests by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality confirmed the tap water is safe to consume. Customers can see if they live in the central zone on Austin Water's interactive map. Those in the north, south, northwest and southwest zones are still asked to boil water as of 7:30 a.m. Feb. 22.
Subfreezing temperatures after a Feb. 14 winter storm led to water main breaks, burst pipes, increased water use and power loss at the city's largest water treatment plant caused Austin Water's storage capacity to plummet and water pressure to drop, leading the utility to implement the boil water notice and ask customers who did have water to make efforts to conserve.
"Please continue to conserve water as the work of restoring water service to full capacity continues," Austin City Manager Spencer Cronk said in a statement.
Austin Water Director Greg Meszaros said in the statement the utility expects to have all water service restored Feb. 22 and the boil notice to be fully lifted shortly after.
For those without water, the city and county are distributing one case to each customer who visits any of 16 different sites located throughout the city between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. The full list of sites is available here.
