Live Texas updates: Winter storm damage, water problems continue

Here’s a look at what’s happening Monday in North Texas, a week after winter storms began to impact millions of Texans.

This story will be updated continuously on Feb. 22.

Many Texans are still facing a water crisis largely brought on by the statewide power outages last week, officials said Sunday, with around 10 million people under boil water notices in the state.

“Forty-eight hours ago we were in dire straits,” said Texas Commission on Environmental Quality Executive Director Toby Baker. “About 14.9 million Texans were on a boil water notice. [We’ve] seen about 5 million Texans come off boil water notices in the last 48 hours.”

Baker added about 215 water systems now have safe water to drink for their customers. That leaves about 1,100 water systems still under boil water notices across the state.

Gov. Greg Abbott explained power across the state of Texas was back to full capacity as of 2:30 p.m. Sunday, though there were still thousands of Texans without power due to equipment damage and other issues. He said he expects power to be fully restored to those without by early Monday.

Customers facing “sky-rocketing” electric bills will have some temporary relief as officials work through how to handle massive power price increases seen during the outages.

“The Texas Public Utilities Commission called an emergency meeting today to issue a moratorium on customer disconnections for nonpayment,” Abbott said during the Sunday news conference. “They are also going to restrict electric providers from sending customer invoices at this time. This pause will give them time to address the electric and power billing challenges that Texans are seeing.”

The governor also said he has requested a disaster declaration for agriculture producers in the state from the USDA, saying it was one of the many issues facing the food supply chain across Texas at this time.

Many Texans are also beginning to face the full aftermath of the winter storms, with burst pipes…