BG Reads | News You Need to Know (February 7, 2022)

News
Written By AJ Bingham

Downtown Austin

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

City of Austin expects to lift boil-water notice by Tuesday night (KUT)

The City of Austin said the current boil-water notice was caused by human error at the city's largest water treatment plant, and officials expect the situation to be cleared up by Tuesday evening.

"It's becoming clear that this was errors from our operating staff at our Ullrich plant," said Austin Water Director Greg Meszaros at a press conference Sunday. "[There were] oversights in how they attended the process of treating water at Ullrich and that's certainly unacceptable to us."

City Manager Spencer Cronk thanked the city's residents for their patience during this event and made a promise.

"This will be addressed and you can be assured this will not happen again," Cronk said.

Meszaros said that Austin Water expects the boil water notice to be lifted by Tuesday night.

At the press conference Sunday, he explained the mistake was made when the employees that monitor the entire process of water purification were not paying close enough attention.

"We have large plants, they're essentially water factories," Meszaros said. "Sometimes factories have to stop the assembly line and correct something and in that spirit it was not properly stopped and corrected. It was allowed to be carried through to the finished water."

The boil water notice began Saturday night when the city sent out alerts to residents asking them to boil water for two minutes before consuming. The city launched water distribution sites Sunday to hand out bottled water and let people fill up containers with safe water. Meszaros said that will continue into Monday.

While the notice is in effect, residents need to boil water for two minutes before drinking, brushing teeth, washing food or giving to pets… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Small business forced to pay thousands on zoning ‘technicality’ (Austin Monitor)

The Zoning and Platting Commission Tuesday blamed the city’s complex code after hearing the case of a landscaping business being forced to rezone its property at a cost of thousands of dollars. 

The 1.7-acre property at 13561 Pond Springs Road in Northwest Austin is home to Perfect Cuts Landscaping, and was previously a nursery for many years. Last year, the city’s code department cited Perfect Cuts for operating a business not allowed in Community Commercial (GR) zoning. Because the city deems landscaping to be “construction sales and services” – a use only allowed in the more intense General Commercial-Mixed-Use (CS-MU) zoning – it needs a zoning change. City staffers recommend GR-MU zoning, which would in effect force the business either to move or to shut down.

Nikelle Meade, representative for the owner, told the Austin Monitor that her client has “had to go to extraordinary difficulty and expense to satisfy what amounts more or less to a technicality.” According to Meade, the owner has been trying to work out this problem with the city for nearly two years. Code enforcement cited the property last February, meaning the owner has accrued thousands in fines in addition to a $11,331 fee to change the zoning. According to the citation, fines accrue at up to $1,000 per day after a 30-day grace period… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Semiannual filings point to early activity in Austin City Council's November races (Community Impact)

Early campaign finance filings for Austin's November election lay out the positions of several City Council hopefuls and incumbents before campaigns ramp up through the year.

Offices set to appear on the city ballot this November include mayor and council members for districts 1, 3, 5, 8 and 9. Mayor Steve Adler, District 3's Pio Renteria, District 5's Ann Kitchen and District 9's Kathie Tovo are all reaching their term limits and cannot run for re-election in their roles unless at least 5% of their constituency backs them via petition. District 1's Natasha Harper-Madison and District 8's Paige Ellis are in their first terms on council and eligible to run again. Tovo is exploring a mayoral run.

The official filing period for candidates seeking to enter Austin's November election races will not open until July 23. However, several candidates have submitted both campaign treasurer appointment forms and semiannual campaign finance reports due mid-January highlighting recent activity or interest in a seat on the council dais.

The Jan. 15 finance reports cover the back half of 2021 from July through December. Candidates are next required to report their spending and donations in a semiannual report July 15 covering January through June of this year… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Austin has one of biggest build-to-rent home markets (Austin Business Journal)

The build-to-rent market in Central Texas has hit its stride. Developers are making massive bets on the single-family rental market, often devoting entire communities to the business model. 

The investment seems sound, as data shows a notable hunger for these rental properties in Austin. The Austin metro has one of the highest concentrations of single-family build-to-rent units in the U.S., according to a new report by RentCafe.

RentCafe counts 1,390 of these rental properties in the metro, making the Austin area the 13th largest market for this housing type. The city of Austin alone has 760, according to RentCafe. The scope of the market makes sense, given the number of renters in the city. About 55% of residents rent rather than own, according to data from the U.S. Census…  (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[TEXAS NEWS]

“Nothing to see here” is good news for Texans and for incumbent politicians (Texas Tribune)

“It got cold and the lights stayed on” is weak sauce, as political slogans go. But for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, the season’s first ice storm couldn’t have come out much better.

He didn’t need a win on this one — the absence of a loss is quite enough.

The Texas electric grid failed a year ago during a polar vortex, putting millions of residents in the dark without heat for almost a week, resulting in hundreds of deaths and billions of dollars of economic damage to the state.

Like political leaders have always done in jams like that, Abbott fired or ran off the regulators and operators within his reach. With the help of state legislators who were also dodging blame, he ran off the public utility commissioners he had appointed, along with the board and top executive at the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the grid day to day.

They told electric generators to get ready for this winter, to keep their plants from shutting down because of cold temperatures and ice. They had hearings, did a lot of public relations work, tried to get everyone toeing the company line: “It won’t happen again.”

Abbott himself got over-exuberant at one point, saying he could “guarantee” nobody’s lights would go off this year. That’s bonkers: Somewhere in Texas, fair weather or foul, someone’s lights are off. Trees fall on electric lines. Winds blow. Lightning strikes. Bulldozers cut underground lines. Things happen… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Texas crypto miners voluntarily shut down to keep electricity flowing to homes during freeze (Dallas Morning News)

Chad Harris got an urgent phone call during last February’s epic Texas winter storm, something he was expecting as the operator of the single largest bitcoin mining and hosting facility in North America. “You need to shed your power now; we need it,” Harris said, recalling the conversation with his local transmission company in Central Texas. As CEO of Rockdale-based Whinstone, which later became a subsidiary of Riot Blockchain, he had a ready answer. “I told them we already had done it two days ago,” he said. That storm left at least 4.5 million electricity customers in Texas without power. This time around, there’s been a year of dialogue between mining companies, the governor’s office and the state’s grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. Miners met with Gov. Greg Abbott in October and said they would shut down in the event of another winter storm.

Earlier this week, Riot Blockchain sent a letter to Abbott with its plan to voluntarily shut down and had 99% of its operations powered off by 7 p.m. Wednesday. “Last year, the miners turned off during [the] winter storm, but there were fewer bitcoin miners then and less megawatts to be taken offline,” said Lee Bratcher, president of the Texas Blockchain Council, an association representing the blockchain industry. “It still made an impact on thousands and thousands of homes. But this year, there are more and larger mining operations that can push back power and they’ve been proactive.” After the 2021 storm, ERCOT contacted mining companies — drawn to Texas by lower energy costs — for help since they are heavy electricity users. ERCOT realized miners could assist in balancing supply and demand during extreme weather by shutting down operations and selling unused power back to the grid as part of an emergency response program. So far, ERCOT hasn’t needed to ask miners to conserve. But many like Riot have done so voluntarily, according to the ERCOT. Shutting down quickly is easy for miners because they can power operations off and on within seconds, said Trent Stout, Priority Power Management’s head of blockchain energy services… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[NATIONAL NEWS]

As alcohol returns to planes, some flight attendants fear an ‘unsafe’ workplace (Washington Post)

Southwest Airlines will bring alcohol service back to most flights starting Feb. 16, the airline said Thursday, ending nearly two years of dry operations and restoring an important source of revenue for the company. But a union representing the flight attendants who will be serving the drinks said it is “outraged” by a move that could exacerbate unruly behavior from passengers. After suspending its full drink menu at the beginning of the pandemic, Southwest said, it will add beer, wine and liquor drinks, all priced between $6 and $7, on flights of 176 miles or longer. The airline will accept drink coupons that had been set to expire in 2020 or 2021 through Dec. 31. It will also start serving nonalcoholic options such as apple juice and hot cocoa. “Customers have expressed a desire for more beverage options, so we’re delighted to restore additional on-board offerings as a part of the Southwest hospitality that our customers know and love,” Tony Roach, the company’s vice president of customer experience and customer relations, said in a statement.

Lyn Montgomery, president of Transport Workers Union Local 556, the union representing Southwest flight attendants, called the airline’s decision to resume alcohol sales “both unsafe and irresponsible” in an emailed statement. According to unruly passenger data from the Federal Aviation Administration, the number of investigations the agency initiated spiked from 146 in 2019 and 183 in 2020 to 1,099 in 2021. Of the 5,981 unruly passenger reports the FAA recorded last year, 73 percent (4,290) involved mask-related incidents. The FAA said in August that alcohol played a role as well. “We have adamantly and unequivocally informed management that resuming sales of alcohol while the mask mandate is in place has the great potential to increase customer noncompliance and misconduct issues,” Montgomery said. The federal mask mandate for air travel and other public transit will remain in effect through March, per the Transportation Security Administration… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

AJ Bingham
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