San Antonio is one of few cities in America to be on the list for the world’s fastest internet, but now some residents say Google Fiber is quickly leaving them thirsty.
Most people take filling up a glass of water from the sink for granted. It's something Fausto Alva has recently learned to appreciate.
“Yesterday was the seventh time in three weeks that I've been without water for a certain amount of time,” Alva said. “We can't use the bathroom. We can't do any washing dishes. We can't drink any water. Good thing we have bottled water.”
Alva said that it's gone from four to nine hours at a time. The long-time residents of El Monte Boulevard also say that the problem started about three weeks ago, just after Alva and his neighbors received notifications from Google. The company started laying down state-of-the-art, fiber-optic cables for that super-fast internet.
In a statement, Google didn’t specify how it is responsible for interruption of water service.
The statement read, in part:
“As we build thousands of miles of fiber throughout San Antonio, we do everything we can to be good neighbors. We communicate with residents and work closely with our contractors to minimize any disruption, including notifying residents before work begins and completing restoration efforts in the area when work is complete. As always, we want to hear feedback from residents in San Antonio so that we can continue to improve and resolve any issues quickly and efficiently.”
Residents KENS 5 that the only notification they’ve received was from San Antonio Water System or SAWS. This week, SAWS dried out the neighborhood for a few hours as it works to replace old water valves in the area. SAWS admitted that the work has caused low water pressure and outages.
Adding to the watery mess: On Monday, there was a water main break at a nearby golf course. SAWS said that it wasn’t responsible for that, but added that the incident affected water pressure in the area.
SAWS says that it will make sure its workers are notifying people about water loss ahead of time, like they're supposed to. But they’re also asking residents to make sure that their updated telephone numbers are on record so that SAWS can let them know when water will be turned off.
