WILSON COUNTY, Texas – For four months, KSAT has been investigating a private water company, CSWR, that owns water wells in the Floresville area and produces brown, overly chlorinated water.
The neighbors at Arrowhead Subdivision in Floresville filed complaints in September, which led to an investigation by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ).
“There were multiple violations discovered, one of which was they weren’t treating the water properly,” said Carrie Wilcoxson, one of the neighbors leading the charge on the fight for clean water.
CSWR has made a couple of changes, including adding flushers to the wells, but it hasn’t replaced the filtration system neighbors have been pleading for.
Plus, the community said the water quality hasn’t changed much, if at all.
“My water’s gotten worse. My hose water was brown yesterday. I was filling up my animal troughs,” said one of the concerned residents. “Now I’m getting like black streaks. It almost looks like black mold.”
“I had someone come to change my filtration system. When he pulled the cylinder out, it went ‘splat’. The sludge that was on it,” said another neighborhood leader Michelle Schraner.
“The chlorine, like I would not drink this water. I would not give it to a child,” Wilcoxson said. “My dog and other peoples’ dogs were getting sick when they were drinking this water. My dogs had X-rays. Their intestines were enflames. Pulled the dog off the water, the dog doesn’t vomit anymore and intestines aren’t inflamed anymore.”
KSAT caught all those comments on camera at a community meeting on Feb. 13 at the Arrowhead Subdivision. The meeting was prompted by a recent letter CSWR sent its customers statewide.
The company informed its customers that it had requested state approval for another rate hike.
“We don’t understand how it’s possible they are able to raise the rates and they’re not providing a quality product,” Schraner said.
Schraner said this would be the third rate hike since CSWR-Texas took over their well in 2021.
Despite the protests of hundreds of customers across the state, CSWR’s last rate hike went into effect in 2024.
“Our rates were raised last year, and that rate was like 117 percent,” Schraner said.
“You see a bill that goes from $21 to, mine was $148.50,” said CSWR resident Robert Eilenberger.
“That’s 770 percent,” said CSWR resident Bob Hill.
Bob Hill and Robert Eilenberger live in a senior living community in Donna, Texas, near the southern border.
“It’s a 55-plus subdivision, and our average age in here is probably 75,” Hill said.
Their situation is different than the Floresville communities.
CSWR buys their water from a treatment facility before distributing it to them, meaning it’s not from a local well they have to maintain.
Yet CSWR told KSAT the rate hikes are necessary to, “cover the costs of infrastructure improvements, system maintenance, and daily operations.”
“There’s no reason for them to be charging us these outrageous rates,” Hill said.
Hill wants the company and the entire state to know what last year’s rate hikes have already done.
“They’ve already cut our property values about $6,000 a lot because the water service in other areas here is $50 and ours is going to be $200 here, or $225,” Hill said.
“You see people that have to leave your subdivision because they can’t even afford a $150 water bill, and then they’re drinking junk on top of it,” Eilenberger said.
While Hill and Eilenberger said their water is never brown, seven boil water notices have been issued since CSWR took over their water two years ago, and they said sometimes it smells like chemicals.
“We don’t drink this water because I smell the chlorination. It’s fine to flush toilets or shower, but I buy my water,” Hill said.
The state’s Public Utility Commission (PUC) is the entity that approves or denies water system rate increases.
The decision was supposed to be made in March, but another entity called the Office of Public Utility Council (OPUC) just stepped in.
The OPUC is a state council that represents the communities and customers during proposed rate hikes.
The council received enough statewide protests to push the hearing to July so that further investigation into customer claims could be conducted.
Those complaints were also sent to the PUC, along with KSAT’s request for information on the proposed CSWR hikes.
Then, in mid-February, a PUC member attended the Arrowhead Subdivision community meeting to hear from the community.
“We don’t have the ability to go in and issue fines or anything for the water quality, but it’s definitely something that should be brought up in the rate case,” the representative told the neighbors.
KSAT reached out to CSWR-Texas asking if the company would reconsider prompting another rate hike.
In a statement, they said, “CSWR-Texas filed this rate case after a thorough review of its investments and operating expenses. We will continue working with all parties throughout the case to ensure rates reflect the true cost of service and adjust as needed.”
“We are going to keep fighting. We’re gonna keep fighting that company. I know they’re probably tired of our neighborhood talking to the news and talking to everybody else about this problem but we are not going to give up,” Schraner said.
Complaints have also landed on the desk of Senator Judith Zaffrini whose team is now using KSAT’s reporting and customer complaints to draft water legislation for this session.
The goal is to tighten some water law to prevent some of these situations from happening in the future.
“We’re trying to get some legislation written on maybe some stronger language on what they should have to do if the water can’t be cleaned up,” Shraner said.
“Set a threshold that at some point around water quality, a filtration system is necessary. Then let’s do it,” Wilcoxson said.
KSAT plan to stay in touch with their office and bring updates as the session progresses.
Previous KSAT stories: