AUBREY, Texas — Kayla Frazier and her family are on year two of relying on 2.5-gallon jugs of water for drinking and cooking water.
“Since we’ve moved here, there have been constant, ongoing issues and just it tastes awful,” she said.
Frazier said their Silverado subdivision in Aubrey dealt with brown water for days before it shifted to being cloudy Wednesday morning.
“They’ve told us it was safe to drink all week,” she said.
“The water was not appealing looking, but at no time was it unsafe,” Chris Boyd, the general manager of the Mustang Special Utility District said. “We never met any requirements for a boil notice.”
Mustang handles water for nearly 90,000 homes, and that number is continuing to grow dramatically as new subdivision spring up in the area.
Boyd said an aggregate formation screening water at the bottom of the well failed, causing sand to get into water. They don’t know why it happened, yet.
“Would you have drank it?” WFAA asked Boyd.
“No, no, I would have not drank it,” he said.
Boyd said the same problem happened twice before to the well.
“There’s just going to be occasional failure of mechanical or aggregate formation,” he said.
“I don’t understand how any of it is legal and how they get away with any of it,” Frazier said. “I mean, they get away with it because they’re our only option.”
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality said in a statement that it received multiple complaints from neighbors about the latest water issue.
“The investigation is ongoing, and the investigation results will be provided to the complainants,” TCEQ said in a statement.
Frazier said outside of the recent system failures, the water always smells of bleach or chlorine and has a consistent milky texture, sometimes creating what appears to be limescale when it dries. Her daughter and husband have had eczema breakouts. Other neighbors experienced their own rashes or hair falling out.
“I’ve never had a dry scalp before. I’ve never had super dry skin,” she said. “To not be able to shower or wash your hair in your own house. It’s disgusting.”
“Just can’t address how people feel and what they may think the problems are,” Boyd said. “We go on facts that we’ve got based on our testing.”
Frazier said on top of water bills, they pay a 1% property tax to the water supply district, which has added to the frustration.
“There’s no one else for us to go with and if there was, they would fix the issue because then they’d be losing money,” she said. “I love the community here. I have been looking at other houses, to move.”
Frazier and her family are on year two of feeling trapped.
“Fix the problem,” she said. “Make it better. Make it better for us.”