PRESIDIO COUNTY –– Faced with continuing environmental violations and fines and no one to run its water district, Candelaria was the focus of a discussion at Wednesday’s Presidio County Commissioners Court again as commissioners explored options for assistance to local communities trying to provide their own water supply. The issue is ensuring water supply corporations in Redford, Ruidosa and Candelaria can do required well testing, manage any contamination problems and effectively collect bill revenue from their customers. Shafter and Las Pampas may be part of that equation as well, as they are in the planning stages of developing water systems funded by state grants.
County Judge Joe Portillo told The Big Bend Sentinel that Candelaria Water Supply — already under a boil-water notice and facing financial sanctions for more than $5,000 from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) — also saw the loss of a longtime operator who handled billing and other administrative duties as well as turning on a pump every day. The Redford manager is also indicating he no longer can handle the duties, he said. Shafter, which relies on water from a well at the former mine to the west of Highway 67, has been under a boil-water notice for some two years.
“They are struggling to maintain their water systems,” Portillo said. “Finding someone to step up, especially with the requirements that TCEQ has on water operations and their systems and testing, it’s very hard to do and it’s going to get even harder unless we come up with a county-wide solution.”
Portillo said Tony Manriquez of Presidio and Shafter — who formerly tested the well there — has offered to negotiate a contract with the county to provide testing at all the community wells. That idea, getting the corporations to chip in and pay one person for testing, is appealing for systems that are facing no testing, but the rub is deciding who will step up and get that contract going.
One option would be the new Presidio County Water Conservation and Improvement District (WCID), formed last fall to meet a requirement for state grant money administration for water systems in Shafter and Las Pampas and improvements in Marfa and Presidio. (The board managing the WCID is officially called the “Presidio County Utility System Board.)
Currently, that board is made up of the county judge and commissioners, but Portillo has said the plan has always been to have one board member from each local supply corporation serve on the WCID board. The district could then do the legwork needed to contract for services paid for by revenue from the combined systems.
In Commissioners Court Wednesday, there was some contention about which entity should spearhead fixes for the small water systems, with County Attorney Rod Ponton saying that on the advice of environmental attorneys he’s spoken with, it should be another new water conservation district formed by a petition from landowners. Presidio County Underground Water Conservation District Manager Trey Gerfers disagreed and said the existing utilities board managing grants can do the work.
Precinct 4 Commissioner David Beebe said one thing was clear: the Commissioners Court isn’t the entity to address the problems, and recommended scheduling a WCID board meeting to discuss the matter separately.
Commissioner David Beebe has long been against any official county involvement in the local district operations. “Candelaria’s water system has been around for quite some time, and even when they were functioning properly, they don’t bill themselves enough to build any [reserves] for maintenance costs,” he told The Sentinel. “So periodically their system goes down, they don’t have anyone to work on it, so they come to the county and say, ‘Well why don’t you just run this for us.’ This is just something that we are not equipped to handle. This is not a county function. This is the job of the water supply corporations.”
But Beebe also agreed that something needs to be done in the short term. Gerfers volunteered to talk to TCEQ about the challenges these communities are facing, getting rid of fines, and not “getting some breathing room” to fix problems locally.
Portillo reminded the court that Candelaria is a community with dozens of young children and someone needs to act to make sure they have safe water to bathe in and cook with. “This is the kind of thing you can’t be on the fence about,” he told The Sentinel.