By Natassia Henry
Duke Holmes, a high school administrator who lives in East Lubbock, an area known for being economically disadvantaged, doesn’t trust the city of Lubbock’s water supply. He’s heard of recent improvements but decides to stick with bottled water.
“Sometimes if I wanna do laundry, the water might be brown,” he said.
Holmes stopped drinking Lubbock water when he noticed the chemicals in the water were causing his friends and family’s teeth to turn brown.
City of Lubbock officials assure Lubbock’s water is clean even if it doesn’t look that way—and if the water looks brown, that’s because a house may need to be re-piped.
Aubrey Spear, director of water utilities for the City of Lubbock, said the water for all cities including Lubbock is held to strict regulations.
“Once it leaves our meter in the alley and goes to the house, that’s the customer's line. They own it. And they have to change out the plumbing if they need to and all of that,” Spear said.
The city of Lubbock’s water system is regulated by the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality, which inspects it periodically and samples the water daily to ensure it is treated and disinfected, according to Spear. The residential areas that are at the highest risk for lead and copper contamination get tested annually.
While Lubbock’s water is held to strict regulations, Spear said bottled water could have anything in it due to its lack of regulations.
According to the last Annual Compliance Report from the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality (TCEQ) in 2017, the state of Texas met 95 percent of health-based standards served by the 6,992 water facilities and the percentage of total population served by public water systems met 98 percent of health-based standards. Among the cases that did not meet the standards in the state of Texas, 23.38 percent were due to arsenic contamination, according to the compliance report.
Lubbock gets its water from four places according to the city website. Water from Roberts County Well Field makes up 58 percent of Lubbock’s supply, Lake Alan Henry makes up 19 percent, Bailey County Well Field makes up 13 percent, and Lake Meredith makes up 10 percent.
Although the water is flowing to the same city, Spear said not everyone gets the same water.
“Depending on where you live, you’ll be getting a different type of water because our water from all the different sources mixes in the system,” said Spear.
Spear explained south Lubbock gets more of the lake water, north and east Lubbock get a mixture of well field and Lake Meredith water and west Lubbock gets Bailey County well field water.
With water usage, comes water waste. As for what happens with Lubbock’s wastewater in relation to the environment, Spear stated several decades ago, Lubbock’s wastewater was not treated to stream quality, meaning if it were to be put back into a stream, it would have a harmful impact.
“Probably 85 percent of our wastewater now can be discharged to the stream because it’s stream quality,” said Spear. “It’ll probably be 100 percent in the next decade.”
According to documents provided by the TCEQ, as of May 3, 2019, there were 1864 closed municipal solid waste facilities in Texas. Lubbock (Region 2) had a total of 68 closed municipal solid waste facilities. Thirteen of those facilities were never constructed and the remaining facilities were closed. Fifty-two of the facilities had their statuses revoked with the other 16, having their statuses withdrawn. As of May 10, 2019, Lubbock has 42 operating waste facilities.
Spear said not only does Lubbock reuse its wastewater, but many small towns do as well.
“We take the treated wastewater and we actually grow crops with it,” said Spear. “It’s a way to get rid of the water and at the same time it’s beneficial.”
You may have been told by a friend or family member to avoid drinking the tap water in Lubbock because it might turn your teeth brown. Well, at one point in time, that advice was valid according to Ken Rainwater, professor of civil, environmental and construction engineering at Texas Tech University.
“Lubbock had a reputation prior to the '60s for high fluoride in our water,” said Rainwater. “That was one of the reasons we stopped using the groundwater right under Lubbock, which was used for the first 60 years of the city being here.”
Rainwater said Lubbock eradicated that problem almost 60 years ago, and Lubbock no longer uses its local groundwater. Because Lubbock receives its water from four different sources, Rainwater said it can affect the taste.
Rainwater also said in the past, people did not pay for something they had to their disposal at home -- drinking water. Rainwater estimated for every 1,000 gallons of water used, it would cost the customer $6, in the City of Lubbock. However, a bottle of water can range from $1 or more. Rainwater believes the way people view water has changed.
“There’s a convenience thing. I think there’s more of a perception of assumed quality and some people just show off,” Rainwater said.
Lauren Loney, an environmental justice and community development fellow at the University of Texas, identified five mobile home communities right outside of Lubbock that have a history of being non-compliant with the safe water drinking act. These communities have their own water systems that do not operate in conjunction with the City of Lubbock’s water system.
These communities served anywhere from 30-150 people. After talking with TCEQ about the state of the well water in these small communities, Loney decided to engage the community on the potential health effects and contaminants that were found in their drinking water.
“We did two community education meetings where we went around to four communities of the five…we went to the ones that were the most populous and we handed out flyers -- one-pagers discussing the homeowners or renters right under the drinking water act,” Loney said.
Loney informed the residents they could sue the public drinking water system since they were not providing safe drinking water, but there was little interest shown from the community.
“Only maybe like seven people showed up to the community meeting,” she said. “There wasn’t just a whole lot of interest.”
Loney explained some citizens heard the word environmental attorney and became uninterested whereas others knew what was going on, but their families had been drinking the water for so long they did not believe it was having an impact on their health.
“They largely seemed like okay with the status quo,” Loney said.
When it comes to issues affecting a low-income community, Holmes believes keeping your mouth closed will not lead to any resolution. As a high school administrator, Holmes is always making sure his students use their voice.
“Sometimes as a people, we have to fight for ourselves, you can’t just sit back. Sometimes you have to be more assertive and speak your voice,” Holmes said. "You can’t just take status quo and be content.”