San Antonio Water System understands the extreme hardship Fair Oaks residents are facing with water outages. SAWS is faced with a multi-dimensional issue in getting water restored in the Fair Oaks area, which is at a high elevation relative to the rest of our system. With widespread water outages and rolling blackouts across the city, lower elevations will need to have pressure before higher elevations can be restored.
Unfortunately, we do not have a timeline for return of service. The number of homes with broken pipes is preventing us from being able to build the necessary pressure to push water uphill to Fair Oaks. To put this in perspective – in some parts of town we are pumping more water today than the highest demand days of the summer. That means there are likely hundreds, if not thousands, of water leaks on private property throughout our service area.
We assure you that we have an extensive operational continuity plan. In fact, we have generators at all of our stations that are controlling the instrumentation and communication infrastructure. However, to control our well pumps and high service pumping systems would require locomotive-size generators in the megawatt capacity. We have about 80 stations operating, not to mention our larger water treatment plants, or our lift stations.
We know this is a very trying situation for customers. Just know that we are working 24/7 to restore service to you.