Any ideas on what kind of bugs you are trying to kill? I could Sous Vide a lot more water than I can boil and assume it's time plus temp thing like everything else

15 seconds at 165 (which is very sous vide able) should kill ecoli

I was joking. I do think it's a good question. "Boil" is just so easy for everyone but probably overkill. Literally.

Cryptosporidium and giardia are two fun ones.

It isn't due to a bug being found, it's similar to the notice a couple of years ago from the flooding. The treatment plant couldn't achieve water pressure levels necessary to meet QA requirements. Doesn't mean the water isn't safe but doesn't mean it is.

Right but what bacteria would we suspect in public water, what would normally fail QA

Only need to boil for 2 minutes

Since it's only water for drinking I guess I really don't need to do 40 liters but would still love to know the answer

Yeah I was wondering about water we use for coffee. Personally I'd feel pretty secure that the heating process would ensure its safe. But I like to live dangerously.

They said if you dishwasher get over 150 you are fine for dishes so I Imagine it's at most 155 for an hour

CoA gets source water from Lake Austin and Travis which do not have Contact Recreation (E. Coli) issues so there is little concern in this instance. The boil water notice is a precaution and not likely based on a sample.

In descending likelyhood of encounter:

Ecoli
Dysentary
Salmonella
Hepatitis
Diptheria
Cholera
Giardia
Carniverous amebas
Cryptosporidium

None are likely, all are possible, and all are killed by boiling. They're all statistically likely to be killed with pasteurization time plus temp (although not absolutely certain). To be absolutely certain, boil for 2 minutes.

In situations like this, similar to threads about odd smelling chicken, etc., do some risk analysis and management. Is it with your and your family's health to risk doing this against recommendations? Is it worth eating $10 of potentially bad chicken and spewing from both ends for a couple days?

Hopefully your risk analysis and mitigation plan is better than ERCOT's.

This is really more of an exercise of understanding the science that goes into these decisions, obviously is easiest to tell the masses boil for 2 mins, just like you tell people to cook chicken to 165 rather than a time plus temp exercise. Understanding the science helps you manage the risk more appropriately if you care to do the work

According to the World Health Organization, a water temperature of 158F (70C) will kill 99.999% of bacteria, protozoa, and viruses in less than 1 minute.

And the Oxford Journal says

"Because enteric pathogens are killed within seconds by boiling water and are killed rapidly at temperatures >60C [or >140F], the traditional advice to boil water for 10 min to ensure potability is excessive. Because the time required to heat water from a temperature of 55C [or 131F] to a boil works toward disinfection, any water that is brought to a boil should be adequately disinfected. Boiling water for 1 min or keeping water covered and then allowing it to cool slowly after boiling can add an extra margin of safety. The boiling point decreases with increasing altitude, but this is not significant when compared with the time required to achieve thermal death at these temperatures."

That's all understandable, but a chicken breast cooked to 165 F vs one cooked to 150 F and allowed to rest for a few minutes are vastly different eating experiences worth the trouble.

Water is gonna taste the same and is easy enough to boil. I suppose a large quantity does take a good amount of time and energy, but I would just play it safe in this regard since we're talking about water and not a pork tenderloin or chicken breast.

Yeah and here my concern is or was creating as much "safe" water as possible. Lots of folks around us had no water and if they did they had no way to boil water. The situation seems to have resolved itself mostly. Sous viding at 155 for 5 mins to get 10 gallons would have given me atleast an extra 20 gallons an hour of capacity

My familiarity with this is all from reading yeast-manufacturers white papers, but they have some useful language that originated in the medical field. The concern is over what percent of the bacteria is killed. Medical sanitation literature usually talks of it in terms of "kill order" ie" what order of magnitude of the bacteria is killed by a given procedure? 99.9% is a kill order 3, and 99.999% is a kill order 5.

For healthy adults, our digestive system can usually handle the remaining bacteria from a kill order 4 sanitation. Older people and infants need a kill order 5. Immunocompromised people need a kill order 6 to reliably avoid illness. Surgical operations need a kill order 9 or 10, so they use autoclaves and other stuff that is prohibitively expensive for us normal folks.

The normal tap water with chlorination + residual method is a kill order 6. Pasteurization is a kill order 5. Boiling the water for 2 minutes is a kill order 7.

All of this comes down to very tiny percentages and what degree of reliability do you need for how vulnerable you are.

Your water is probably fine...it just might not be because there wasn't enough pressure or provable levels of disinfection added.

Lots of municipalities issued the order before anything actually broke too.

DubFalls said:

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Cryptosporidium and giardia are two fun ones.

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Giardia is the gift that keeps on giving. You get the runs, You get over the runs. Then three or four days later you get the runs again. Flagyl is your friend. Been there done that after a trip to Playa Del Carmen

Yea, and Flagyl = no alcohol.

Keeper of The Spirits said:

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Right but what bacteria would we suspect in public water, what would normally fail QA

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It's a big unknown in these situations. The main concern with loss of pressure is the potential for ingress into the system from... anything. Think about a leaky pipe... when under pressure it drips or sends out a stream of clean water... annoying/ wasteful but doesn't contaminate the rest of the water going through the pipe. Now reverse it... a pipe under little/no pressure can take on whatever nasty fluid it happens to be submerged in underground, or wherever.

The boil stuff is really just an additional safety margin because they really have no idea what may have gotten in.

Disclaimer: not a water engineer but married one