From 7:22 p.m. on February 9, 2021, until 11:52 a.m. on February 19—ten days—temperatures in the Spur area never rose above freezing. Sleet and snow and three days of single digits compounded the impacts on schools, businesses, churches and public services.
Rolling power blackouts mandated to electrical providers from the Electrical Reliability Council of Texas due to insufficiencies in the electrical grid left some residences without power.
The loss of power to some municipalities across the area compounded problems by causing failure in water pumps.
The City of Jayton lost water on February 15, and an extended electricity outage complicated it coming back, in addition to a water line break.
According to Jayton city secretary Michele Fager, Jayton’s water comes from a well in town, and approximately 300 customers are serviced by 316 meters. Fager said that Jayton’s water was out for a week, and their pumping station was also out for a couple of days.
For now, all has been repaired. Thirty volunteers came out to help Jayton crews check for leaks before municipal water service could be turned back on.
In Spur, White River Lake Municipal Water District worked hand in hand with the City of Spur to check on leaks when the winter thaw began. WRMWD flew a drone over their pipelines to confirm that they had no leaks, and in addition, WRMWD worked with the DPS helicopter, which flew over the WRMWD pipelines and Spur to check for leaks.
Dozens of volunteers combed the town going from meter to meter looking for leaks.
The City of Spur had no water for most of the weekend, and the city and volunteers distributed drinking water and non-potable water on both days at the Spur Community Center.
At press time on Monday afternoon WRMWD manager Shane Jones said, “None of the four towns that we serve are good to go. Something is still pulling water from the system.”
He said that until the source of the leakages are identified, all the water district can do is “ask everybody to conserve until we get the supply tanks filled.”
Jones said that five supply tanks serve the City of Spur, and none of them are full, but none are empty either.
On Monday afternoon, Spur city secretary Barbie Norman encouraged Spur residents to conserve water. “There are still leaks, and if people don’t conserve, White River Lake will shut us down.”
Norman said that over the weekend volunteers found at least 60 water leaks from the more than 500 meters in Spur served by city water.
“We have marked those with yellow tape,” Norman said, “however, we have found that some of those customers are turning their meters back on. If we find out that a leaking meter has been turned back on, it’s $175 fine. We’ve actually had to lock some meters off because the residents keep turning their meters on even though they had water leaks.”
Dickens lost water on Monday due to a line break under Highway 82. City secretary Lillian Atkinson said she expected the line to be fixed sometime Monday, and in the meantime water was available at the Dickens County Courthouse.
“We are asking everyone to please conserve as much water as you possibly can until we get our supply tanks refilled.” —Shane Jones, manager, White River Municipal Water District
Throughout multi-day outages of power and water, the community of Jayton, Texas, in Kent County (pop. 647) reached out to help one another even as their officials reached out to state officials for help.
By Tuesday night, Feb. 16, the Kent County Nursing Home, whose backup power generator had malfunctioned, was on the verge of having to evacuate its 39 residents—but the problem was, regional facilities authorized to make their beds available were also struggling. County Judge Jim C. White was still on duty at the courthouse after attempts to get action from power companies when the lights came on again. White credits state Senator Charles Perry with helping persuade the utility company to authorize switching on power again after the city had been in the dark for most of 30 hours.
Throughout Texas Spur Country reports came in of neighbors sharing water by the truckload for livestock; Philip Wright temporarily offered his fresh water tank for free. Spur Volunteer Fire Department hauled water to pastures in its tanker truck. Kent residents like L’Rae Lee brought water from Lubbock to share, and organizations in Spur brought in bottled water by the pallet in addition to non-potable water for flushing and other uses.
Once the thaw began, city council members, school boards, and other citizens responded to the mayor’s call to scout water meters around town—a tall order for 500-plus customers.
Others looked in on elderly residents, or offered free lodging to those without heat. White is grateful for the ways small communities have looked after one another during this winter weather emergency. “We’ll get through it together,” he said.
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