ODESSA, Texas — Water issues have been plaguing the city of Odessa as citizens have been left without clean water after not one but two boil water notices.
Meanwhile, a contractor hitting a water main line on Monday left over 7,000 people without water, as the city lost over 28 million gallons of water from the one break.
City officials spent a good chunk of Tuesday's city council meeting discussing solutions to their water line issues.
City Manager John Beckmeyer called the problem "unacceptable" and pointed to the city's lack of maintenance as a reason that thousands of valves and pipes in the system have begun to age and break.
“We started discovering that more and more of the problems that we were having while they were normal and they shouldn't have been that extraordinary," Beckmeyer said. "They were made extraordinary by the fact that we have had years of us of sitting neglecting our infrastructure.”
Which is why the city agreed to have Beckmeyer and Utilities Director Kevin Niles negotiate a new contract with an outside valve company to come in and check all of the city's valves and water pipes.
There are three things Beckmeyer is hoping to accomplish with the new contract.
“One, are we exercising the valves and do the valves work?" Beckmeyer said. "Two, is identifying the valves and where are they getting mapped out and then three, repairing and replacing valves, coordinating that effort and making sure that we have it where we can schedule outages to replace about."
The new contract wasn't the only thing they agreed to. Beckmeyer rallied behind the idea of a valve crew who would be a permanent crew that would operate under the water department.
This valve crew would come into play after a contract with an outside crew is made.
“So, we get a contractor in here and we have some people that hopefully can attack this at a more rapid rate and get us off the ground," Beckmeyer said. "Then we'll establish a valve crew which is a permanent crew that as we fix the valves, we're not doing a good job if we're not going back and maintaining the valves and make sure they work and making sure that they're operational at all times.”
Exercising and testing all of the valves across the city of Odessa is something that could cause another break or outage to happen. However, the city feels it’s something they have to do.
“It’s a risk, but it’s a risk that we’ll have to take," Beckmeyer said. "We’re not at a point where we can say we can’t do this because we’ll cause more leaks or breakages.”
The city is hopeful that they can have somebody looking at the valves by the end of May.