A West Texas town is in the fifth year of a boil-water notice, and an answer to its water woes is still not clear

Ed Puckett, a volunteer, helps run the water plant in Toyah.
(Photo by Mitch Borden, Marfa Public Radio)

Most boil-water notices don't last years, but in Toyah, Texas, pop. 90, a boil notice was issued in 2018 and it's still in effect, reports Martha Pskowski of Inside Climate News. "A cascade of mistakes and mismanagement has left this small West Texas town without safe drinking water. . . . City leaders failed to hire properly licensed water treatment plant operators, missed grant opportunities and installed improper bypasses, while Texas Commission on Environmental Quality officials did almost nothing. . . In June 2018, routine water testing found that samples of Toyah's water tested positive for E. coli and the city issued a boil-water notice." Later vuolatins have included excess trihalomethanes, a byproduct of water treatment that can casue cancer.

"Elida 'Angel' Machuca, a former city council member, holds the TCEQ responsible for allowing the town to stall and remain out of compliance with hundreds of drinking-water violations it filed against Toyah over the past five years," Pskowski reports. Machuca told her, "TCEQ cannot remove themselves from the gross negligence that is here. The city, the county and the state have all been negligent."

Toyah, Texas (Wikipedia)

Kelly Haragan, director of the environmental clinic at the University of Texas Law School, told Pskowski, "It's really shocking and unacceptable that there was a boil water notice for four years and that there hasn't been clear communication to people in Toyah about what's going on. And that no one did anything to provide people with clean drinking water in the meantime."

Pskowski reports, "TCEQ spokespeople declined repeated requests to comment on the case, citing the ongoing civil suit. . . . Gordon Hoyt, Toyah's new mayor, dismissed concerns about the water." Hoyt told Pskowski, "The water is tested by an independent laboratory. I see all the tests. I understand what's coming through the pipes and I drink it."

In 2020, "The TCEQ continued to issue violations for a litany of problems. . . . In May 2022, the Environmental Protection Agency joined the investigation. Finally, in September 2022, the Texas attorney general brought a civil suit against Toyah," Pskowski reports. "Haragan said there are questions the lawsuit doesn't resolve, like finding a more cost-effective water supply for Toyah. That might mean consolidating with a larger water system." She told Pskowski, "People have to actually figure out, how are we going to get water to this community?"