Inside the Lake Palestine pump station.

As city of Tyler officials looked back on the February winter storm, several lessons learned came to their mind — increasing transparency and planning further ahead for emergencies.

Tyler Mayor Don Warren said in March that after the snow dissipated he and city officials discussed both successes and failures.

Ahead of the storm, the city purchased several generators for the purpose of downed traffic lights and for both water treatment plants and pump stations.

Despite those efforts, the prolonged freezing temperatures led to an inoperable generator at the Lake Palestine Raw Water Pump Station, which caused the Lake Palestine Water Treatment Plant to get offline. A boil water notice lasted for a week because of the water facility issues.

“If I had a do-over two weeks ago, (what) I would have done as far as (what) we did (it would be) getting the word out one day sooner,” Warren told the Tyler Morning Telegraph Editorial Board in March. “Because when the public heard that the Lake Palestine plant was down and Golden Road could only supply 22 million gallons and it takes 30 million gallons to feed the city, all of a sudden people were saying now I get it. And that’s when things started turning and I think we were one day off.”

Following the storm, the city staff and leadership developed a document of lessons learned, and among that list was having more transparency to ease the citizens’ concerns during a major storm.

“Rather than waiting to assess the impact of an infrastructure failure before communicating to the public, as we did with the pump failure due to loss of power at Lake Palestine, the city will communicate to the public the same day as the failure, and if we cannot provide an assessment of impact, we will provide an approximation and advice on what could occur and how residents should respond,” the document read.

For an event of that magnitude, the city is seeking to establish a phone number and call center with adequate lines and staffing to funnel reports of water main breaks, damaged streets and other issues.

Officials also want to make a website that reports from the beginning of the weather event. The city team will deputize and train additional staff members to support the communication team during a crisis response.

Weatherproofing Equipment

According to the city, there is a need to weatherproof backup power sources moving forward for severe weather conditions.

“You never know what’s going to break on you during a process like this, which is where the lesson learned from this one comes in,” said City Manager Ed Broussard.

He said maintaining a fuel source for the generator became an issue during below-freezing temperatures. The city has both diesel and natural gas for generators, but diesel is likely to freeze at very low temperatures.

“That’s something we have to always be mindful of and see if there are some opportunities for some of our sites to do some fuel,” Broussard said. “Can we switch them to natural gas and have a direct line to them if possible? Those are things we’re investigating.”

The city of Tyler officials will look into adding natural gas-run generators at these water facilities along with adding generators at all key city facilities, such as the airports, that could be needed for shelter or key functions.

“For some of our facilities, it’s one of the things we learned is for some of our city facilities, while police and fire stations have generator power, some of our other public facilities do not,” Broussard said. “Thus, when power goes out it’s at Harvey Hall or at City Hall. The power goes down (and) there’s no generator back-up that goes with that.”

In addition to generators, Warren said they’ve also discussed a snow plow that could be attached to a pickup truck or a four-wheeler.

“We were using a motor grader, so you probably could purchase little snow plows that are inexpensive, generator parts that are fairly inexpensive,” Warren said.

He noted while there’s a need to review purchasing more equipment, it’s not the time to “spend a gazillion dollars for a weather event that occurred one time in 100 years.”

“So I think it’s something that needs to be reviewed, but not go crazy,” he said.

State Power Grid Failures

Looking back on the power issues during the winter storm, including at senior citizen centers, Warren hopes facilities that are vulnerable without electricity will think of adding generators.

Warren said moving forward after the rolling statewide blackouts, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas needs to be better managed to control the electric grid.

“People talk about the rolling blackouts and that was just bluff. To me, it was more than a rolling blackout; it was ‘we’re going to cut you off,’” Warren said. “What you realize really after the fact, is the whole ERCOT power grid was just minutes away from just a total crash. That’s the thing that’s really frightening is that if we had a total crash it could have been weeks or months before everybody has their electricity back.”

Following the storm, Warren was in Austin among other leaders and heard from Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick about the state’s power grid.

“I didn’t walk away from there thinking, ‘man, they got this figured out, don’t have to worry about this anymore,’” Warren said. “So I think there’s a lot of work to be done.”

Broussard added lawmakers and state officials need to tackle the issue of power generation and how to prioritize power distribution, such as toward essential facilities, hospitals and nursing homes.

He noted that blackouts are a possibility under droughts as well.

According to the city of Tyler plans, officials will continue working with the electrical company Oncor to ensure the city’s critical infrastructures are on their own service lines to prevent cuts during rolling blackouts.

The city staff is also evaluating how to store more water-treatment chemicals onsite at the treatment facilities in the event of not being able to receive deliveries for multiple days. This would help to ensure residents will have drinking water and not need to boil, according to the city plans.

There are also intentions to develop a protocol and checklist for each city facility when dealing with severe weather events to help mitigate damages.

Roads and Vehicles

The city of Tyler team is looking into providing first responders and emergency response vehicles with specialized gear for emergency assistance in icy conditions.

Broussard said there will be an evaluation of city cars and vehicles during the budget planning process, such as clips for first responders’ shoes and chains for vehicle tires.

For sanding the roads, the city said crews will continue the typical plan of making sure the major roads are safe for travel, not every single street during a lengthy snowstorm event.

Tyler’s plan includes the sanding of key roads and overpasses for emergency access while working with Smith County and the Texas Department of Transportation.

“The goal during a multi-day freeze is not to restore full access to roads, especially secondary neighborhood roads (the more drivers on the road creates a melt that will then re-freeze at night, turning into black ice which is more dangerous),” the city’s statement read. “It is important to stress that the roads are sanded for emergency vehicles and first responders and that, during events like these, our request will always be that residents avoid driving on them.”

Pipes

As freezing temperatures struck the area, water main leaks and breaks became a growing concern with 110 main breaks reported and later repaired. The city often sent out media alerts to be shared with the public detailing where the breaks were located and which ones were later repaired.

To further inform residents, the city plans for Tyler Water Utilities to begin using Smart 911 RAVE Alert System, an early notification program that shares information about severe weather, to notify residents of main breaks and repairs in their areas.

People can sign up for RAVE at cityoftyler.org on the homepage by clicking on a large yellow box saying “local emergency alerts” in bold letters.

Broussard noted severe weather continues to be a concern during tornado, hurricane and drought seasons as well as winter.

“The severity of the weather as it intensifies continues to be something we evaluate,” he said. “So not just for snow events, but how do we handle drought events because that also cracks the soil, tears it up and calls for main breaks.”

He added that drainage improvements are also a concern due to tornado and flooding seasons.

“We have lots of different drainage projects that we are currently undertaking, but just kind of that comprehensive plan of going after drainage in Tyler in its entirety is a thing us and our engineering firm are working on finalizing,” Broussard said.

The city is also seeking to use its geographic information system to map the locations of breaks or damage and give the public real-time links to see the breaks in their areas and what has been reported.

For the fiscal year 2020-21, which runs from October last year through this September, TWU will work to replace about 1.8 miles, or 8,616 linear feet, of water lines, according to documents.

There are also water main looping projects this fiscal year to address 3.5 miles of dead-end water mains. The elimination of dead-end water mains prevents stagnant water and creates more continuous flow through the rest of the water distribution system.

Water Projects

Looking further into the future, the city plans to invest more than $22 million in the water system over the next five years.

In a two-phase project, the city is developing a water utility system inventory. The first phase began in January 2019 and the second phase in April 2020.

The inventory will be developed using survey work and by scanning, digitization and geo-referencing of water system assets collected from the city’s archives of construction plans.

The inventory will assist in showing where pressure improvements are needed. The inventory will include the diameter of the pipes, type of piping material, the location of the pipes and their corresponding length.

In phase two, there will be a digitization of the archived water plans, identifying data gaps and developing a geographic information system web map. The inventory will also be used for a hydraulic computer model of the distribution system to be used for planning purposes.

Also as an extension of the water utility system inventory project, Tyler officials are developing a city-wide water utility system model and master plan study.

The model will include the water distribution system, existing water treatment plants and raw water supply transmission facilities. Using that model, a master plan will be developed to prioritize the city’s need for water system improvements.

The model and master plan study project began April last year when city council approved a $500,000 engineering services contract with Halff Associates, according to the city of Tyler.

(John Anderson contributed to this report)

Editor’s Note: This is the third and final part in a series about the water and infrastructure in Tyler from the February winter storm. The second part on this past Wednesday looked at the issues that faced the city of Tyler and residents who lost water and power during the winter storm. A story on April 11 detailed the history of the water system and infrastructure in Tyler.