Brown, Stinking Tapwater In Small TX Town One Problem; 90% Cuts In Fed Funding Help Another; Taste Of Freedom Unchanged

[hatrack]

The water isn’t always brown, but Scarlet Weathers lives like it is. Not once has she drank the tap water from her kitchen sink in her house in Sweeny, Texas. She knows, like everyone else in the town, that it can’t be trusted. Even her small grandchildren have noticed it during bathtime. Why is the water brown? She and her daughter, Tally, instead spend hundreds of dollars a year on bottled water and refillable jugs. It’s common practice in Sweeny, a small town about 60 miles southwest of Houston. Weathers, who grew up in the area, has never known anything else: cooking with bottled water, feeding animals with bottled water, brushing teeth with bottled water, stained dishes, stained sinks, stained clothes.

EDIT


Brown water fills the bathtub in a Sweeny home. Many residents worry the murky water isn’t safe to bathe in.

Such water issues are not unique to Texas. President Donald Trump’s proposed 2026 budget would cut the clean and drinking water revolving fund by nearly $2.5 billion — leaving $305 million for states — a move that would impact not just Texas but every thirsty state dependent on the funds, such as California, Florida and Illinois.

To combat these growing concerns, Texas legislators are sending Proposition 4 to the ballot this November. This measure would dedicate a portion of state sales tax revenue to the Texas Water Fund for a total of $20 billion over 20 years. Experts believe this is a great start, but many remain concerned. “There is no silver bullet to meet demand,” said Rogelio Rodriguez, the chief operating officer for the Water Finance Exchange, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that helps communities access funding such as the drinking water program. “There is no one agency, no one support system, that has the money to meet demand. This is a $30, $40 billion answer.”

EDIT

In Sweeny, town leaders are already working on another way to fix the off-putting brown water without the state revolving water funds, by using a chemical called Bicarbus that is more cost-effective, according to City Manager David Jordan. He’s hoping to see results soon. Some in Sweeny have installed or are debating purchasing full water filtration systems costing several thousand dollars. Others are just biding their time until they can afford to leave the small town entirely. For Weathers, the Sweeny resident who spends hundreds a year on bottled water, any trust that the town will fix the water supply faded long ago. When she heard that Sweeny rejected the state water funding last year, it felt like the final straw.

EDIT

https://capitalandmain.com/its-brown-and-burns-your-eyes-in-small-town-texas-clean-water-is-elusive