ORLANDO, Fla. — Orlando’s water emergency is over, city leaders said on Tuesday, citing a downturn in the summer’s soaring demand for liquid oxygen to treat COVID-19 patients.
Liquid oxygen also plays a critical role in purifying water provided by Orlando Utilities Commission.
In late August, Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer and OUC officials urged a cut back on water usage. They feared tanker-truck deliveries of liquid oxygen could drop to as few as five per week from the typical 10 per week. The pace of deliveries actually dropped to about six or seven weekly.
Dyer said Tuesday that when the call for cutting back water usage went out Aug. 20, the utility was concerned then that within a matter of days there wouldn’t be enough liquid oxygen and that a mandatory boil-water alert would then have to be issued.
But, over the nearly seven weeks of liquid-oxygen shortages, the city was able to reduce water usage by an average of 10%, averting the need for a boil-water alert.
The city of Orlando dialed back irrigation of parks and ballfields. Bullock said commercial customers played a key role in reducing water usage, including theme parks, hospitals, hotels, the region’s bus agency and others.
“We are here today to tell customers you can go back to normal usage,” Bullock said.
At its water plants, OUC converts liquid oxygen into ozone, which is injected into raw water pumped up from the Floridan Aquifer. Ozone gets rid of the naturally occurring impurity of hydrogen sulfide, which adds color and the smell of rotten eggs to water.
As the region’s largest water utility, OUC provides about 90 million gallons of potable water daily to 140,000 customers or an estimated 400,000 people within city limits and in Orange County.
Bullock said steps have yet to be determined on how to prevent such a water emergency in the future.
“We will take some time, we will do a post evaluation, we will look at the measures to determine are there some things that we learned,” Bullock said.
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