Laredo council directs staff to draft North Laredo water-pressure continuity plan

The Laredo City Council on Tuesday voted to direct the city manager to prepare a North Laredo Water Pressure continuity plan aimed at preventing and responding to repeated low-pressure events in Districts 5 and 6.

Mayor Victor D'Tsarino made the motion, outlining five required components: identify pressure-sensitive areas before construction, establish minimum pressure targets and real-time monitoring, create contingency measures such as temporary pumping, set a clear rapid-response protocol and require proactive resident communication when service or pressure will be affected. The motion was seconded and carried by the council.

Residents and council members described several recent outages. "Twice we've been without water for 8 hours," said Ubaldo Granados Jr., who organized a community town hall and urged official attendance to address persistent outages.

City utilities officials told the council the system has seen wide fluctuations: "They used to be between the fifties, the sixties... and then they went back to the thirties, 35, 39 PSIs," the assistant director for the water system said, describing the low-pressure readings during peak irrigation demand and other events. Staff and the superintendent for distribution said an emergency at the Mohawk pump station, combined with high nighttime irrigation demand and construction impacts, contributed to the drops.

Council members pressed for urgency and clearer timelines after years of boil-water notices, damaged pipe sections and repeated line hits by contractors. Staff said the council recently approved work to map and exercise valves and that the utilities department will form a stabilization team, increase 24/7 monitoring, and, if needed, bring in outside hydraulic and engineering support. Officials said they will return with an isolating/mapping report and a proposed project cost to stabilize the pressure zones.

The motion asks that the follow-up plan define the vulnerable neighborhoods, minimum pressure thresholds that will trigger immediate response, contingency engineering solutions, responsible points of contact for rapid response and a communication protocol for affected residents.