AT SAN PEDRO: SANS EAU, SANS REPRESENTATION, SANS HOPE

By Juan Montoya

Once again, the residents of this burg on the westernmost outskirts of Brownsville went before the board of the Military Highway Water Supply Company and were told to...wait.

For the past year or more, the clients of the MHWS have been putting up with water contaminated with organic and particulates-laden silt that give the water emanating from their spigots and faucets a greenish, yellowish taint. They have been warned not to drink the water or allow their children to come into contact with the liquid.

San Pedro residents, literally at the tail end of the supply chain for the water district, have been putting up with tainted water because of contaminated pipes that have not been maintained as they should have been. Cleanup efforts have proven to be extremely expensive and residents now buy their drinking water. 

Nonetheless, in past meetings, they have brought children before the board to show rashes and outbreaks in their skin that resulted when they came into contact with the water. At yesterday's meeting of the water supply company board, no one from the City of Brownsville was there to speak out on their behalf.

San Pedro is within the limits of the City of Brownsville.


District 4 commissioner Ben Neece has been out of town for the last week and At-Large "B" commissioner Rose Gowen, who campaigned there before he reelection in May, was a no-show. Residents there had pinned their hopes on Gowen who flaunted her public-health credentials when she made a campaign pit stop with former District 4 commissioner John Villarreal.

The residents had pinned their hopes on Gowen, a practicing gynecologist with a bent toward public health given her past association with the University of Texas School of Public Health. She also champions other health-related issues like the farmers' market, cyclobia, etc., and in general, everything healthy.

After the election, when residents called on her to deliver, she told several of them there was nothing she could do after all.

Yesterday, the only public official who accompanied the citizens of San Pedro when they went before the MHWS board begging them to do something now about the contaminated water was Cameron County Pct. 2 commissioner Alex Dominguez. Dominguez said he understood that the contaminated water was not a county government problem, but has urged the board to consider temporary solutions like tapping into the Brownsville Public Utility Board's lines. That solution could cost a mere $100,000, a payment that the MHWS board has declined to consider.

In response to the residents' and Dominguez's appeals for the board members to do something, the board instead brought their engineer to say it'll be roughly 16 to 24 months for them to finish the studies, and then more time to get the funding and clearance from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) complete the job.

"Twenty four months is not a solution," said a resident. "It sounds like a long-range plan."

Some residents said that – given the board's recalcitrance to act quickly to address the health hazard problem with their tainted water – they are already in consultation with a law firm to seek a solution.
The MHWS has been cited by the TCEQ for – among other things, high arsenic levels in the utility's drinking water.