Georgetown water customers: Emergency water conservation notice lifted

Last updated 2:05 a.m. Tuesday, April 26

As of 1:15 a.m. Tuesday, April 26, Georgetown water customers can resume regular water use. City staff were able to make repairs to intake pumps and use regional water supply to get our main water treatment plant back up and running until permanent repairs can be made.

A generator was secured out of an abundance of caution, but wasn’t ultimately needed. The City is currently designing a permanent generator back up at the plant.

The City would like to thank all its water customers, regional partners in Round Rock and Leander, to City staff, and to our electric contractors, T-Morales and Eaton, who helped us through this incident.

Around 9 p.m. Monday, April 25, the City issued an immediate water conservation notice to all water customers (see a map of Georgetown’s water utility here). The water remained safe to drink, but conservation was critical to avoiding boil water notices.

Water customers were asked to limit water use by turning off their irrigation system and limiting residential water use.

The notice was in response to an issue at the City’s largest water treatment plant. A fire at a transformer, reported about 7:36 p.m. Monday, caused the pump station and intake pump to go down. There were no injuries.

Staff worked overnight to determine repairs, locating parts, etc., and were prepared to bring in a generator from Dallas. The City has several backup generators, a lesson from Winter Storm Uri, but was unable to use them for this purpose. Intake pumps require specialized equipment and having the ability to rent them quickly also helps meet the City’s resiliency requirements and goals.

Staff also worked with regional partners, including the cities of Round Rock and Leander, to ensure we maintained a supply of safe drinking water.