Around 60,000 residents in Grand Prairie are still advised against drinking the city's tap water due to potential contamination. This has now impacted local businesses.
Joe Zavala, owner of Zavala's BBQ in Grand Prairie, has been updating his customers through social media about his establishment's closure. This is the second day he's had to close due to contaminated water.
“It’s been a lot of just waiting,” Zavala said. “I feel bad for our employees. They are ready to come to work and I had to say, 'Hey, we can’t do anything.'”
It's also a double hit for him.
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“We have a coffee shop right up the street and my wife owns that and that one that’s a lot of water there,” Zavala said “Filters, ice, we are going to have to get all that maintenance before we open up because we don’t know the effects the water had.”
While firefighters fought a fire on Tuesday, a foam agent backflowed into part of the water system, affecting nearly 60,000 customers north of Interstate 20.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality must issue an all-clear for the "do not use" order to be lifted, and city officials are working to expedite this process.
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“The city of Grand Prairie's aviation director, just to show you how above and beyond we're trying to go to get this situation resolved, is actually taking samples, water samples and flying them to a lab in Corpus Christi hopefully to get results even faster,” Eric Alvarez with Grand Prairie communications said.
While the city is currently awaiting state clearance, Dr. Brett Roth, the medical director of the North Texas Poison Center and a professor of emergency medicine and toxicology at UT Southwestern in Dallas, mentioned that you would likely need to consume a significant amount to experience any effects.
“You know, when we talk about a hazard rating, you know it's something that is a fairly low hazard on the hazard scale,” Roth said.
For now, residents and businesses just have to wait.
“It’s just out of our hands, right?” Zavala said. “As much as I want to be upset, we can’t. We just have to get the green light and hope that our community comes out and supports us.”
