CANDELARIA — When Rosaelva Madrid passed away last month, the small community of Candelaria mourned her loss as a friend and neighbor, but her death also raised a serious question: Who is going to take care of the town’s water system?
Madrid ran the small water corporation there for more than 15 years, making sure the well was pumping water, checking meters, billing the 50 or so customers and collecting payments.
Madrid’s sister, Lorraine Tellez, and niece, Bianca Tellez, live in Midland, but they have long histories in Candelaria and knew something had to be done to help the community keep the taps flowing. “It literally took my aunt passing away for us to realize how much she was doing on her own without the help of anybody else,” Bianca Tellez said.
The well that serves the town needs repair and needs to be powered on manually every morning, the system is facing state fines of more than $5,000 for not meeting water quality standards, and someone had to read meters and collect bills.
“I didn’t know what to do,” Lorraine Tellez said. “Somebody told me to contact the county judge, so I did. Well, when I talked to Judge [Joe] Portillo he told me if I could help out at least a couple of months or so until we could see where we could get things fixed … So that’s what I’m doing at the moment. We’re just reading the meters, and then I do the bills, and the people just come and pay, and then someone flips the well pump’s breaker on each day.” Tellez said she wants to be in Candelaria temporarily to help settle things after her sister’s death, but in the long term, there are a lot of unknowns, she said.
Lorraine and Bianca Tellez attended last week’s Presidio County Commissioners Court meeting to be part of a discussion about Candelaria’s predicament. No action was taken, but commissioners pledged to set a meeting of the county’s new Utility System Board as soon as next week to address the issue. Commissioners and the county judge serve on that board, at least for now, which was formed as required means to administer $4.6 million in grant money dedicated to improving county water systems. Portillo wants the board to eventually be composed of one person from each board of the county’s water supply corporations — Redford, Ruidosa, Candelaria, and eventually Shafter and Las Pampas.
Portillo also wants to hire or contract one person who can test all the systems wells and troubleshoot if something goes wrong and use the revenue from each water system to pay for it. County officials have been discussing that idea for more than a year and a half with nothing concrete to show for a solution. The judge is hopeful that the dire situation in Candelaria will spur action. Precinct 4 County Commissioner David Beebe has been resistant to any idea that involves county funds or the county becoming entangled in governing or maintaining the small water supply corporations. Beebe said he is ready to have the Utility System Board meet, however, to hash out the issue and seek a solution for Candelaria.
Trey Gerfers, Presidio County Underground Water Conservation District general manager, also is assisting in finding a solution for all the problems faced by the water districts — primarily well testing. Gerfers also told commissioners at their meeting last week that he would inquire with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to see if the fine to Candelaria could be eliminated or mitigated.
“So this is where we are now, trying to find if we can get some assistance from anywhere or just at least point us in the right direction,” Bianca Tellez said.