Fort Worth trash pickup, de-icing roads, plans for broken pipes in winter storm
With the Texas winter storm expected to roll in on Friday, here’s a rundown of how the city of Fort Worth is preparing.
Fort Worth pipes & water service
Mary Gugliuzza, spokesperson for the city’s Water Department, said supplies are on hand and work crews are on standby to repair water mains should they break as a result of the temperatures. Contractors are also ready to assist with repairs if needed.
But, Gugliuzza cautioned, the impact may be delayed past this weekend, when the lowest temperatures are expected.
“Water temperature doesn’t change as quickly as the air temperature,” said Gugliuzza. “It takes sustained hours below freezing before we see the water temperature drop to a point where we see an increase in breaks in cast iron mains.”
During the winter storm in February 2021, hundreds of old cast iron water mains broke in Fort Worth. That, coupled with the loss of power at city water treatment plants, left many residents without water.
Earlier this year, the city began replacing cast iron mains, which are more prone to breaking during a freeze. But several hundred miles of those pipes remain, and it will likely take decades to replace them all.
Backup generators have been installed at the West Side Water Treatment Plant in case it loses power, and plans are underway to get backup generators at the city’s other treatment plants in the near future, but those have been delayed by supply chain issues, Gugliuzza said.
Right now, losing power to the water treatment plants is the biggest concern, Gugliuzza added.
Storage tanks at the water treatment plants will be full by Friday and kept that way through the weekend, and treatment plants will be staffed at all times.
Additionally, water drawn from Lake Worth will be sent to the central part of the city and isolated there. The reason being that Lake Worth is the shallowest of the city water sources, therefore its water typically gets the coldest.
Finally, Water Department call center employees will be on standby through the weekend in case the volume of calls exceeds what the off-hours dispatch can handle.
Fort Worth roads & streets
The city’s Transportation and Public Works Department has been performing deicing operations on roadways. By Wednesday afternoon, crews had applied more than 1,300 gallons of salt-and-water brine solution to select streets and bridges.
Transportation and Public Works spokesperson Lara Ingram said the deicing brine was applied to streets near city hospitals on Wednesday, and 95 bridges were treated with the solution
The first priority was deicing bridges as well as those road near hospital entrances. The second priority is “critical hills,” followed by intersections and high-volume roadways.
“The bridges included as critical are due to different aspects like traffic volume, access to interstates, a history of icing and a history of vehicular incidents,” the city said in an online post.
Brining operations will continue around the clock starting Friday. If ice or snow accumulates, crews will add a mixture of sand and salt for traction. Once again, bridges and roads near hospitals will take priority.
The city doesn’t have snow plows to clear roads given how infrequently winter weather events occur each year. However, Ingram said the city can deploy up to 30 sand trucks at a time, and those crews will be working on alternating 12-hour shifts.
Fort Worth trash pickup
Lola McCartney, spokesperson for Fort Worth Environmental Services, said her department is monitoring the weather forecast and will provide information soon regarding trash pickup.
“We should have more information in the next 24 hours as the storm progresses,” McCartney wrote in an email early Wednesday afternoon.
McCartney referred residents to the city’s Cold Weather Update webpage for status updates regarding garbage collection and drop-off sites.
Fort Worth city offices
City spokesperson Kevin Neal said there are no firm plans yet for city office closures, but that could be announced Thursday afternoon.
This story was originally published January 21, 2026 at 1:35 PM.