Some Magnolia residents struggling to get clean water.
Audrey Amirian has advocated for her neighbors since the start of Mill Creek's water discoloration and pressure issues in August of last year.Mill Creek resident and local realtor Audrey Amirian moved her family to Magnolia, an up-and-coming area, figuring property values there could only increase. She also saw an opportunity to raise her daughter in a community with a small-town charm — an atmosphere that was reminiscent of her own upbringing.
From August of last year until now, Amirian has counted about 14 days where water outages have occurred in her neighborhood. These outages at minimum last 15 to 20 minutes and can happen at any moment without any notice from the city. Though the moratorium provides some relief, as it states the city will not approve any new contracts for water taps, all the projects that have received approval before December 2022 can continue to build.
With current development continuing, Mill Creek residents are left wondering when the neighborhood’s water problems will be resolved and which users take priority. The city of Magnolia wanted to annex this area quickly to have space for this growth, but to do so they had to prove they could provide water and sewer. To do so, the city’s former engineering firm laid waterlines at the intersection. However, these lines were rushed in their construction and did not have enough of a volume of well water to provide adequate pressure for all the up-and-coming projects approved, Parker said.
The current city engineering firm, AEI Engineering, took over for the former firm in September 2021. When the firm recognized the pressure problems, they immediately notified the city, the current City Engineer Mike Kurzy said. Some of the documents Parker has requested have been given to him, however a majority have not, he said. Parker filed a second public records request on Wednesday, February 1, to try to bring the request to a close and figure out if he will be able to have access to the unprovided documents, Parker said.
The only solution that residents have right now, according to Parker, is the well construction plan that the city announced. Magnolia said they plan to construct two wells every year, for the next four years, to keep up with the rate of development. David Womack, former Storm Water Investigator II for Harris County Pollution Control Service and Mill Creek resident said their water rate is already high when compared to other water services in the area.
The San Jacinto River Authority charge Mill Creek residents pay is a charge everyone who lives in Montgomery County has to pay. According to Parker, this charge is a result of a contract the county entered with the San Jacinto River Authority in the event they would have to transition over to surface water.
Although Mill Creek is technically not a part of the MUD itself and is also not provided its water by the MUD, residents’ MUD taxes go toward paying for this infrastructure. Spencer contacted the mayor of Magnolia, Todd Kana, and reached back out to Doering to see if there was an alternative solution. Doering once again proposed switching the meter, but this time to a meter with a new meter reading device and software. This new meter would read the hourly rate of water usage, instead of the daily rate of usage, Spencer said.
Mayor Todd Kana addresses the public at a city council meeting where Mill Creek residents gathered to discuss the high water bills.“We replaced the meters to prove to the customer that it was usage and not a faulty meter,” Kana said. “These meters are all electronic, they’re all less than five years old, every customer in Magnolia has the same meter and it is only happening in one subdivision?”
Because the city has not found any fault meters, the mayor has repeatedly insisted to residents that their past high water bills were due to overwatering or irrigation system issues and leaks. “I had sent emails since February 2022, and it took until November 2022 to respond and now they want to have a conversation with me? No, I don’t have a conversation for them, I really don’t like DR Horton or Magnolia,” Spencer said. “There’s nothing I have to say to either of them.”
Common complaints from residents during the height of the neighborhood’s water issues included late departures to school because their children had to wait on the water to turn on to wash their face or brush their teeth. This was a larger problem in August, when outages were first occurring, as residents did not anticipate having these issues and had no water supply in storage.
In the past, the city has not posted TCEQ findings online; the residents would have to do their own search for the reports. Some residents have come together to discuss getting the water tested by a third-party organization, but the status of this test was put on hold for the time being due to a need to crowdfund for the tests’ expenses. Third party laboratory tests vary in cost depending on how extensive the test is, the most baseline start at $10 and can be upwards of $720.
Hal said that after going to TCEQ, several weeks later the city had posted a failure to report notice, but they never specified that it was a failure to report traces of E. coli in the water system. While city leadership has not been especially forthcoming, city employees have taken to their personal social media pages to comment about the issues in Mill Creek, Amirian said.
“I am not saying we have the best customer service, but I will say some of the phone calls that city staff are coming from people who are quite angry, and I’ll be honest they suffer language and abuse,” Kana said. “No person should have to and when a customer comes in using language directed towards someone personally that they don’t even know, that is not the best way to get results either.
“Honestly, there were so many small issues like that when we moved in it was a disaster, I would never buy from DR Horton again,” Chuck said. “I don’t understand how a builder of that size can try to cut corners like that.” He requested assistance with the AC and was told that the house was not built to cool under 20 degrees of the outside temperature. Womack was in disbelief when he had a two-ton AC unit for a 1,800 square foot house and followed up continuously to upgrade the unit, until finally in October they did.
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