More and more people are gathering in Texas. The population explosion also means an increase in water demand.
Take Western Odessa – many residents do not have running water. This is in an area where the billion-dollar oil industry is booming. But getting water lines where you need them is a big problem, considering how to pay for new infrastructure.
Passing through the neighborhood of West Odessa, Catalina Tavares points to the bulky aquarium that sits alongside most homes and RVs.
“There’s a black tank here. They have a green tank right there,” she said. “A RV Place with three tanks.”
Residents don’t have reliable sources and therefore store water in these large containers. West Odessa is an unintegrated community that believes local leaders have around 50,000 residents, and in recent years the West Texas community has grown rapidly.
Many people came here because of cheap land and a few regulations. It’s a place where you might see a small ranch in the middle of a residential area, a work yard filled with oil rigs, or a mobile home tightly packed into one lot.
“This is West Odessa. There’s a beautiful house and then the most random mobile home will collapse,” Tavares said.
As more people move here, communities are expanding beyond existing water supply. So the tank. It can take a lot of time and money to fill with thousands of gallons of water.
Pulling into her neighbor’s house, Tavares tells us how they carry water.
“They’ll have flatbeds, they have different kinds of tanks,” she said. “They went out where they thought it was cheap and she said it took about two or three hours a week to carry the water.”
Tavarez is part of a group called the West Odessa Water Warriors, and is trying to connect many residents to local water utilities. Patti Kappauf founded the group last year, but according to her, it wasn’t easy.
She said, “You’d think you’re a prolific oil field, you’ll see. We’ll have money – but we’re not, you know, this population just got out of control.”
The majority of the problem is that parts of Western Odessa have access to running water, but the larger stripes do not. The local water system is operated by the Ector County Utility district, which does not have the millions of dollars needed to run the water line at the far corner of West Odessa.
Darrell Pando, who was recently elected to the Utility District Board, is maintained at night by how difficult it is to get running water in the West Odestan.
“The main issue is 99% of people seeking water and there’s no infrastructure at all because it’s outside the district,” he said.
If they could expand their water infrastructure, more people would have to pay the district, which sparked some difficult conversations.
Pando recalls what the citizens told him. I said, “I might not be alive either.” I said, “It may not be my child, it may be my grandson, it is finishing this.” ”
According to Pando, there are several projects in the work that will expand cleanliness and access to running water, but none will solve the problem on the scale required.
All over Texas, communities are worried about water shortages as more people enter. Lawmakers are talking about investing more in water projects. But West Odessa people like Catalina Tavares feel abandoned.
“It’s not a problem for them, it’s not a priority for them,” Tavares said.
She noted that it’s not always about expanding the line to new developments. In some cases, the old water wells have been depleted and that’s what happened to her.
“Running water is a basic need, which means it shouldn’t become a problem now,” she said. “It should have been fixed years ago.”
For now, Tavares and her neighbors will continue to fill in water containers wherever they can to keep the faucet running.
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