Presidio County officials on Wednesday appointed a handful of community representatives to a recently formed utility board that will tackle water problems in some of the Big Bend region’s smallest towns.
The Presidio County Utility System Board was formed late last year to meet grant reporting requirements for various water infrastructure projects in the county, as the Big Bend Sentinel has reported.
Those projects are part of a broader, budding initiative to address issues around water access in the county’s “colonias,” a term often used to describe predominantly-Hispanic, rural border communities that lack basic infrastructure or services.
Initially, the utility board was composed entirely of county commissioners, but on Wednesday, commissioners voted to replace themselves with representatives from Candelaria, Shafter, Redford and Ruidosa. Deirdre Hisler, a Marfa resident who is running unopposed for a county commissioner’s seat this November, is set to chair the board.
Other new board members include Charlie Angell of Redford, Martha Stafford of Shafter, Wikar Kadhim of Ruidosa and Bianca Tellez, a Midland resident with ties to Candelaria, who has spearheaded efforts to maintain that community’s water supply after the recent death of her aunt, the town’s longtime water manager.
At a meeting Wednesday, officials stressed that the list of members could change as needed in the future, but that they wanted to get the board off of commissioners’ agendas and into the hands of the communities themselves.
“Do not for a second think we’re abandoning [you],” Joe Portillo, the county’s top elected official, said.
Citing upcoming budget discussions and other county business, Portillo said the board would be better suited in the hands of community representatives than elected officials.
“It makes more sense for you guys, as interests in your communities” to staff the board, he said.
The new board members, most of whom attended Wednesday’s meeting, have not set an initial meeting date, but began discussions on their path forward at the meeting.
Hisler said discussions are underway to have a nonprofit called Water Finance Exchange examine each of the towns’ water supply system financials as a starting point. The nonprofit helps communities “develop and fund community-based water projects,” according to its website.
Portillo has encouraged the utility board to look at Redford’s water supply corporation as a model, describing it as “the most consistently-run” water supply operation among the county’s smallest towns.
Charlie Angell, board president of the corporation, said the Redford system has mostly thrived because it has enough water customers to pay a system operator.
“50 water meters, at $30 a month, we have enough revenue to help pay what it takes for someone that has an interest to do it,” he said.
But Angell pointed to one main hurdle the board is likely to face if it seeks to upgrade the tiny, under-resourced water supply entities in the region: doing so could come with a cost to residents.
“The smaller communities - say Ruidosa, where you only have 12 active [water] meters - if they really want to stay solvent they’re going to have to charge $150 a month, which is not going to be feasible,” he said. “As a countywide thing, it’s pretty simple math - it’s going to have to be supplemented, or jack the rates up where nobody can pay it.”
While board members have not scheduled their next meeting, Hisler said the meetings would take place in the towns across the county, not just in Marfa.
The board will have to meet once a month, she said.
“I think at first we might want to meet a little more often,” Hisler said. “I think it’d be great to do field trips to the existing water systems to understand them.”
