Freezing temperatures and hazardous road conditions throughout the state of Texas in February caused outages that have not only affected households but also some water and wastewater facilities.
Communities and water companies dealt with boil orders and warnings about water quality due to supply shortages and potential contamination, so breweries and restaurants stepped up by providing free water.
After pipe bursts and frozen pipes impacted residents of Denton, for example, residents received help from Denton County Brewing Co., reported Spectrum News.
When electricity at the Denton County Brewing began to stabilize, the Denton County Brewing team started boiling water in the massive boilers used to make beer so that community members could bring large containers into the brewery and obtain water in their mostly powerless homes, according to Spectrum News.
Other breweries across Texas and other businesses with the capacity to do so created similar water stations for nearby residents in need, according to Spectrum News.
Repairs to damaged pipes can take longer after extreme weather events such as this so repair companies will likely have a backlog.
A few San Antonio breweries also temporarily stopped making beer to provide residents with quality filtered water.
The water supply of Blue Star Brewery in Southtown was unaffected by the winter storm, so the team decided to turn what was going to be a brewing batch of beer into purified water at no charge, reported KSAT News.
In Houston, Equal Parts Brewing, which stores about 2,000 to 3,000 gallons of reverse osmosis water at all times, gave out water to anyone in need, reported the Houston Chronicle.
Editor's Note: If you know of more breweries taking part in these efforts that we should include in our news, let us know by emailing [email protected]
