CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — The City of Beeville's drinking water report from 2022 showed some violations that might raise some concern.
The report that was released in June of this year shows a certain contaminant that if consumed for years on end can leave you with an increased risk of getting cancer.
City officials consume about 3.3 million gallons of water a day, and in the summer, that number can rise. In last year's annual report, one point of concern was the presence of something called trihalomethanes or THMs, a chemical compounds that are tasteless and colorless environmental pollutants.
Many of those chemicals are considered carcinogens.
Beeville City Manager John Benson said the maximum containment level for THMs is .08 milligrams per liter. The state tests for THMs every 3 months to make sure those levels are under control.
"We came in on that quarterly average at .084 and so we were .004 over that maximum level. We made adjustments to bring that down," he said.
With those adjustments, Benson said the city was able to bring the containment level down to safe levels that second quarter. A contributing factor to those unexpected containment levels, the city's addition of four levels water wells.
Beeville used to just receive their water supply from lake Corpus Christi, but now the mixing pressure of the two new water sources created a problem.
"The mixing of the water, from water with organics to water from wells changed the distribution system to where our testing, where we need to flush and where we need to inject chlorine, all of that changed," he said.
Since that first violation in April of last year, the city began testing for those chemical compounds once every month rather than waiting on the state to come in and test on a quarterly basis.
Benson said the proactive testing schedule will give the city a better idea of what they need to do to adjust and best serve their water customers.
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