Former Austin Water executive director Greg Meszaros blamed the recent three-day boil water notice on a staff error at the state capital.
He later went into further detail about what lapses occurred to cause the problem. Public policy leaders are holding meetings to discuss the problem.
Meszaros subsequently resigned from his role as the utility company’s leader on Feb. 11 as questions were asked as to why there was a day-long wait prior to the boil water notice being made public.
“It’s becoming clear that this was an error from our operating staff,” Meszaros said. “Oversights in how they attended the process of treating water.”
Meszaros went on to talk about what problems specifically occurred.
“To all of my knowledge, our alarms were working during that system, and they were being acknowledged,” Meszaros said. “But the decision making for that is where things started to break down.”
Meszaros was unsure of why more help was not sought by the employees.
“I don’t entirely know why, they felt they had it handled,” Meszaros said. “There is no evidence of gross negligence by employees.”
Former Austin Water director and Assistant Operations Director Rick Coronado said during a special meeting at the Austin City Council on Feb. 15 that the Ullrich plant’s alarms were not working properly and claimed that the employees did not try to get the appropriate assistance. The meeting was called by city council members Paige Ellis and Natasha Harper-Madison, according to a report from KXAN. Following the public resignation of Meszaros in response, three Austin Water employees were put on leave while an investigation into the causes and handling of the water crisis was ongoing.
At the moment, experts believe that there is no evidence of infrastructure problems that may have caused these issues, according to a report from KXAN.
