City says residents shouldn’t be alarmed by water letter

By Lindsey Vaculin

General Manager

City residents received a letter in the mail this week regarding water violations that happened in late 2012 and early 2013 and City Manager Rhett Parker wants residents to know that they shouldn’t be alarmed.

Cameron resident Clementine Ray spoke to council during the citizen’s comments portion of the Cameron City Council meeting on March 6 about her concerns about the letter.

“We continuously receive these violations and we never really learn if they have improved or if you are still working on them,” she said.

“TCEQ said we have to send this out to our customers,” Parker said. “To be honest this isn’t fair to send out to our citizens about an incident that happened four years ago. Our current water system has been more than adequate it has been superior.”

Parker said he can’t explain why TCEQ is making the city send out the letter. The city’s water hasn’t had any problems in the last three or four years.

In late 2012 and early 2013, the City of Cameron’s water and wastewater contracted operator Severn Trent Services reported a water treatment violation to TCEQ. After notifying TCEQ, Severn Trent neglected to issue a public notice, as is required by TCEQ regulation. 

Last week, after over four years, the city received a Notice of Violation for failure to meet requirements of the Public Notice Rule. Per this rule, even though the water treated was utilitzed by customers over four years ago, the city must still issue a notice.

The letter said that it is important for all the customers in the City of Cameron water system to know that there have been zero violations for turbidity since 2014.

Parker said the Texas Water Development Board also approved the clarifier project for the city, which allows the city to go out to bid to replace the city’s current clarifiers - large storage tanks that settle the sand within the water system.

Replacing the clarifiers is the first step in the city’s larger water projects.