Today is Monday, February 22nd, and you're listening to the morning announcements.

I'm Sammy Sage.

We have a lot of stories to cover today, so let's start with an update out of Texas.

President Biden declared a major disaster in Texas, which unlocks more federal resources

to assist the state.

The declaration states that assistance can include grants for temporary housing and

home repairs, low cost loans for uninsured property losses, and other programs to help

individuals and business owners recover.

As of yesterday, water service remains disrupted for about half of Texas residents, which

has led to boil water notices for more than 14 million people.

As of yesterday, some of these boil water notices have been rescinded, including in Houston

and Galveston, meaning that the tap water is now safe to drink there, but still not everywhere.

This comes as homeowners in Texas received shockingly high electric bills last week.

In some cases, totaling upwards of $1,000 per day.

The reason for this is that many consumers in Texas have something called variable rate

contracts with their utility company, meaning that they're charged the daily wholesale price

for units of energy.

Usually this makes energy cheaper, but when demand went up last week due to the storm,

so did the price of electric.

Texas State Representative Michael McCall told CNN that federal assistance will be able

to help homeowners vote through pair their homes as well as pay the exorbitant electricity

bills that they were surprised with.

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