US: Millions of Texas Residents Still Without Water Supply
8,800,000 Texans are still under boil water notices while 120,000 still have no water service at all. | Photo: Twitter/@NBCNews
More than 30 percent of Texas residents, United States, are still without water service today, after the blackouts caused by the winter storm that left some 60 people dead throughout the country.
The difficulties, aggravated by the lack of foresight of local authorities and rampant privatization, affect almost nine million people, or about a third of the 29 million inhabitants of the demarcation, distributed throughout 199 counties.
In this regard, the Houston Chronicle reported on Monday that the anger towards the governor of Texas, Republican Greg Abbott, grew due to the storm.
More than four million homes were without electricity amid dangerously low temperatures, and an increasing number lacked heat and running water.
The newspaper adds that this is one deadly disaster in a series that Abbott faced in his six years as governor: hurricane Harvey in 2017, which killed 68 people; six mass shootings that left more than 70 dead; and a pandemic (COVID-19) that killed nearly 42,000 people.
The governor said the day before that water services were being restored throughout Texas and that more than three million bottles of the liquid were distributed.
Meanwhile, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, a Democrat, noted that water problems were widespread, and many unavailable plumbing materials and supplies are needed.
About a third of Texas still facing disrupted water supplies. Some 8.8 million people in Texas, about a third of the states’s population, still had issues with their water supply as of early Monday.
Also, some Texans are facing unprecedented price increases on their electric bills due to the recent storm.
The unprecedented snowfall, which affected the state and 40 other territories across the country, caused a political firestorm that damaged at least three major Republican figures’ reputations in the demarcation.
Senator Ted Cruz was found to have fled to Mexico on Wednesday night, although he announced his return when he was caught in the act. At the same time, Governor Abbott was criticized for his lack of leadership and misleading claims about the power outages’ causes.
Meanwhile, former Governor Rick Perry suggested that Texans preferred blackouts to federal regulation, a note that major media outlets and the general population found insensitive at a time of widespread suffering.