After nearly three days, the boil water notice in the city of Port Arthur has been lifted.

A posting went out around 9:15 p.m. on Friday night that read:

“Good evening, the Boil Water Advisory for the City of Port Arthur is lifted. Water pressure has increased, and residents will continue to experience increased water pressure throughout the evening. Again, the boil water advisory for Port Arthur is over. Thank you.”

LaRisa Carpenter, public information officer, said the simple explanation is the recent cold weather caused underground water pipes to bust and leak. A more complex answer, however, is a combination of issues, she said.

She said the earth was starting to shift because of all the moisture on the ground earlier in the week and then came the cold weather, making maintaining water pressure more difficult. Residents were also dripping their faucets so the water in the pipes wouldn’t freeze, causing reduced water pressure.

“Crews had over 200 calls on Wednesday and they had to shut off the water at all the meter boxes,” Carpenter said. “They also had over 50 water leaks.”

She speculated the age of the city’s infrastructure could had been a factor in contributing to the number of leaks, but she doesn’t know without the exact location of a particular pipe within the city.

All of the city’s water utilities crews were out repairing leaks with the help of some outside contractors. Port Arthur police officers and firefighters were also out locating leaks.

“The benefit of new infrastructure would help, but water leaks happened in other places. Mauriceville, Orangefield and Winnie had issues too,” she said.

Carpenter said the city is required to maintain minimum water quality standards for drinking water set by the Texas Commission on Water Quality. Loss of pressure requires the city to send out a boil water notice.

Residents can also help. The city is encouraging them to visibly inspect the pipes to their homes and winterize and wrap their pipes to prevent many leaks.

Additionally, though the boil water notice has lifted, some areas of the city may not have stronger water pressure as other areas.

“We’re not out of the woods yet. There’s more cold weather ahead,” she said.

Bill McCoy, president of the Greater Port Arthur Chamber of Commerce, said he didn’t have exact numbers how the boil water notice affected businesses, only what he observed traveling around the city and heard.

“Though it’s not equal to (Tropical Storm) Harvey, the closings were similar. Electricity is a nice thing to have, and you can find bottled water, but water is necessary to flush and shower,” McCoy said. “Restaurants have to flush their toilets for sanitary reasons. If the sewers back up, they have to close.”

He noticed schools were affected too.

“You can’t have school in those conditions,” he said. “Our (chamber of commerce) office in the EDC (Port Arthur Economic Development Corp.) building was backed up and we had to send people home. You can’t stay there.”

McCoy and his wife have been staying in an apartment at Seahawk Landing at Lamar State College-Port Arthur since Harvey. They had no water.

He said they went to Nacogdoches for his mother’s birthday and also for an opportunity to take a shower.

Tiffany Hamilton, former Port Arthur City Councilwoman, said the recent leaks show why it’s important to prioritize the construction of water utilities.

“Water and sewer lines need to be replaced rather than patched. We’ve been putting a Band-Aid on them over the years,” she said. “We need to replace the infrastructure under the streets before repairing the streets. Fortunately that part of the process has begun.”

Hamilton explained over the years some of the lines have been replaced, but the majority of them had to be repaired.

“The City Council has thought about it, but not given it the attention,” she said.

Hamilton said the U.S. Congress has offered funding for infrastructure to municipalities over the years in the form of matching grants. She added that infrastructure is an issue that has bipartisan support.

Other options are bonds to raise funds and decreasing expenditures in the water and wastewater utilities management.