Ellis County still searching for answers more than 50 days into boil water advisory

About 150 customers of a water utility in Ellis County have been under a boil water notice for nearly two months, highlighting decades of neglected infrastructure in the small community roughly 50 miles south of Dallas.
The South Ellis County Water Supply Corporation has three employees, three wells and around 600 active meters, office manager Desireé Gruben said.
Since July 8, one of the wells has experienced lower pressure than allowed by state regulations, requiring the organization to place about a quarter of its customers on the notice.
Facing aging infrastructure, high repair costs and inaccurate maps of the region’s water lines, the corporation hasn’t been able to find what’s causing the low water pressure, but it’s suspected that a leak or multiple leaks are behind the issue.
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“We are a small nonprofit utility system that has been neglected for many years,” Gruben wrote in a statement to The Dallas Morning News. “Our staff has been utilizing what little resources we are provided and doing everything we can to get the pressure back up to par.”
Gruben said billing does not account for about 70% of the company’s monthly water usage, and the discrepancy has been going on for about 20 years. That’s five to seven million gallons of water a month that’s unaccounted for, general manager Gregory Adcock said.
The corporation restricts customers’ water at least twice a week from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. to allow the storage tank to refill overnight, Gruben and Adcock said.
Low water pressure puts drinking water at risk of contamination and could affect the community’s ability to put out fires.
Patrick Dunn, 68, lives in the area under the advisory and said his wife drives about a half hour to Waxahachie to take a shower. He says his water smells like “rank fart.” Apart from the boil advisory, he said, his water pressure has been going down over the 18 years he’s lived at his residence.
“Even if the water was clean, [my wife] couldn’t even wash her hair because you can’t get enough water out of her shower head to rinse it,” Dunn said.
Water pressure issues and bad-smelling water might not necessarily be the corporation’s fault, Gruben said. It could be an issue on the customers’ side of the meter, such as a leak on their property.
The company has fixed at least five leaks in the area of the boil advisory in the past few weeks, and each fix has helped the pressure a little bit, Gruben said. They’re still unsure if a leak or several leaks caused the low pressure. It could be illegal water line tapping or another unknown cause.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality requires a minimum pressure of 35 pounds per square inch throughout the distribution system during regular operations and a minimum of 20 psi during emergencies.
Adcock said when the pressure fell below 20 psi in July, the corporation was required to advise customers to boil water before drinking, cooking and washing their hands. Not everyone on that well may be experiencing low pressure, Gruben said, although they’re on the advisory.
Water can become stagnant when pressure is low, said Lara Zent, executive director of the Texas Rural Water Association. The corporation is a member of the TRWA, a trade association that seeks to support small utilities serving rural communities.
The corporation issued the advisory for everyone on the affected well out of an abundance of caution, Zent said.
“It’s not that the water has been tested and found to be harmful, but there’s a potential for harm,” Zent said.
The corporation is trying to find the cause. Gruben said its staff is working around the clock, seven days a week, to search for the suspected leak.
Adcock, the utility’s field technician and a contracted crew are working by foot and drone to locate the suspected leak, searching for water on the ground or areas of green, well-watered grass that could indicate a leak from a water line below.
It’s not easy.
The corporation services meters across nearly 94 square miles, Gruben said, with roughly 23 square miles affected by the boil water notice, Adcock estimates.
“I can show you the miles on my truck, how much we were out looking,” Adcock said. “I can show you the sunburn. I can show you the scars from poison ivy.”
The corporation’s maps are inaccurate and don’t match the lines in the ground, making it harder to find potential issues, Gruben said. The previous administration did not properly document where lines were laid, she said.
The three employees at the water supply have all been with the company since March 2023.
“We’re just going by what we were given when we started here,” Gruben said. “We’re just doing the best we can and working with what we got.”
The state’s rural water association sent help to pinpoint the suspected leak, including equipment that uses sound to locate leaking water. Even with its assistance, the source of the low water pressure has not been found.
Gruben said the underlying issue is the old water lines that should have been replaced years ago.
Adcock said the corporation has hundreds of miles of water lines that will cost millions of dollars to replace. The aging lines are less resilient to floods and drought and are more prone to leaks, but the company doesn’t have the funds to replace them, Gruben said.
Gruben said the previous administration approved a new well, which she hopes will be in service soon and may help. She said they were told it would be working in July of last year, but it has been delayed because electricity hasn’t been installed.
Customers have voiced their concerns, speaking out at board meetings and asking for answers.
Dunn said he can’t water his plants anymore because there’s no pressure, and he hasn’t recorded a psi above 20.
Joann Dahl, who’s lived in her home since the 1970s, said she’s had water pressure issues throughout the year.
Sometimes, she recorded her water pressure at 8 psi and other times at 22 psi. She said she let her plants die and gets frustrated trying to do laundry with the low pressure. She buys bottled water and ice and is concerned about what would happen if there were a fire.
“I know they’re trying. I don’t know what the answer is,” Dahl said. “We get aggravated and frustrated. … But you do what you have to do.”
Adding to the aggravation is a recent rate increase.
South Ellis County Water Supply Corporation raised rates this summer, increasing the monthly and volumetric rates by 7.5%. It charges a minimum monthly fee of $76.86 for standard residential service.
“Everybody’s just flabbergasted,” Dunn said. “We can’t get water that we can drink, and they’re raising our prices.”
The Public Utility Commission of Texas has economic regulatory authority over water utilities in Texas.
“There is no evidence that South Ellis is in violation of PUCT rules,” a spokesperson for the commission wrote in a statement to The News.
The commission encourages consumers to contact the commission’s Consumer Protection Division if issues can’t be resolved with their utility service provider.
Aging infrastructure is an issue for water utilities across the state, Zent said. Water lines tend to be the last thing that’s replaced as above-ground infrastructure is often prioritized.
A 2021 report by the Environmental Protection Agency found the country’s drinking water infrastructure needs $625 billion in funding in the next 20 years.
For small utilities relying on funds from customer rates, it can be hard to keep up with safety regulations in the face of expensive, aging infrastructure, Zent said.
Jason Knobloch, deputy executive director of the TRWA, said the costs have likely tripled in the last four or five years.
“[Customers] want the work done, but they don’t want to pay for it,” Knobloch said.
The TRWA is one source of assistance for small utilities and rural communities, but Zent said rural water supply corporations can also look to government sources of financing and grant funding for help with large infrastructure projects.
The Texas Water Development Board offers loan and grant programs, including through the Rural Water Assistance Fund. The U.S. Department of Agriculture also has grant and loan funding resources for rural communities and their water systems.
Texas passed legislation in 2023 creating the Texas Water Fund and allocating $1 billion for water infrastructure projects and conservation. Zent thinks $1 billion is “a drop in the bucket” for the state’s infrastructure needs.
For affected residents, there seems to be no end in sight for when their water will be safe to drink again.
“I don’t have a timeframe,” Gruben said. “Until we find the leak and get it fixed, we just have to keep doing what we’re doing.”