Houston Water endeavors to provide advance public notice of water shut offs of impacted customers. Houston Water's highest priority is to preserve the integrity of the City's drinking water system.  

Public Notification of Water Shut Off for Emergency Operations and Repairs

During emergency operations or repairs, the city will endeavor to notify impacted customers, particularly critical customers, such as medical facilities, education centers, commercial and industrial businesses and other public water systems. The emergency operations or repairs may result in unexpected interruption of water service where no advance notification is provided.  The City does have registries of critical users, such as medical facilities, and endeavors to provide notification to those customers. Customers that are experiencing an unexpected water interruption can call 311 to confirm if it’s a scheduled/unscheduled outage and seek further assistance.

Public Notification of Water Shut Off for Capital Projects

The City employs contractors to improve and extend the distribution system as part of the Capital Improvement Project program. The contractor and the City agreements require that contractors provide 24- 48 hours of advanced notice of a water shut off. The notice is intended to protect critical customers against potential water outages to critical customers that the contractor may not be aware of.

Public Notification of Water Shut Off for Scheduled Maintenance and Repairs 

The City uses both internal crews and contractors to perform schedule maintenance and repairs.  For scheduled maintenance, a brief "test-cut" of water is performed prior to the actual work to confirm all impacted customers.  Prior to performing the scheduled work, the same 24-48 hour notification is provided to impacted customers.