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Austin Boil Water Notice Affects Local Restaurants

Austin airport’s water fountains are shut off

Water being poured into a glass
Water glass
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Nadia Chaudhury is the editor of Eater Austin covering food and pop culture, as well as a photographer, writer, and frequent panel moderator and podcast guest.

Austin residents will have to boil their water for consumption and related uses because of the recent floods, which will affect local restaurants as well.

The October rains brought more levels of debris into Central Texas’ water supply reservoirs than its filtration systems are used to handling. The city decided to still pump out the water at “treatment levels not typical of the utility’s high standards of consumption,” in order to provide water to people.

While the City of Austin’s site isn’t currently loading (most likely because of increased traffic and overloaded servers), all tap water meant for drinking must be boiled for three minutes. When it comes to restaurants (cooking, washing produce, ice, etc.), only boiled or bottled water is recommended. Austin restaurants have been notified specifically about the boil water notice. People have been cleaning out supermarket and grocery stores’ water bottle shelves already.

Black Star Co-op is letting people fill up on boiled water at the brewery, and St. Elmo Brewing is offering to do the same for local businesses.

Here are how Austin restaurants, cafes, etc. are dealing with the water boil notice (many restaurants are using boiled/bottled water to prep food and drinks):

This article will be updated to include how Austin restaurants are dealing with the water boil notice throughout the day.