Early City Administrator Tony Aaron released the following information regarding the lifting of the city’s boil water notice.

As of 04/27/2015 at 1:20 p.m. the City of Early is lifting their boiled water notice.  The water is safe to consume and use as under normal conditions without being required to boil it first.  After the leak was repaired early Sunday morning, samples were pulled from various locations across the city.  Those samples were collected in compliance with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) guidelines. The samples were sent to a lab with the Upper Leon River Municipal Water District for testing Sunday afternoon.  After completing the testing, the samples came back within the limits required by TCEQ for safe drinking water.

Our utility department has worked long and hard hours to return our water system into operations. Although boiling water prior to consumption has been an inconvenience to our citizens, it is a safety precaution that had to be followed and is recommended by TCEQ under these circumstances.

Water pipe breaks occur from time to time, but in most cases the repair can be handled to avoid a boiled water requirement.  It has been many years since Early has issued such a notice, and we have learned a lot in the process.  There are never too many ways to get this type message out, but the use of the internet, social media, our local media partners and public postings still left some people unreached. We have learned from Code Red that the use of their system in an incident such as this is also a resource that we can use in the future.  Code Red however, only reaches around 1000 members of our community.  I would encourage our citizens to sign up for Code Red though our website, or by contacting the City Hall or Police Department.  Code Red can be used for various situations of emergency notification that can prove to be useful to our community.  Additionally, the City of Early is looking into other non-emergency public notifications systems that could be utilized to disseminate various types of useful information to our public.  We hope to have a proposal for such a system in place for our city council to consider for approval in the near future.

I personally would like to thank our great citizens for their patience and understanding in this matter. People are just accustom to turning the faucet on and an immediate need being met. This confidence in the water supply is a testament to a top notch water system.  Although a boil water notice can shake that confidence, I can assure you that the quality of our water system is restored to a continued dependability.

To sign up for Code Red emergency and weather related notifications, CLICK HERE.