Residents Of A Small Texas Town Are Finding Tiny, Red Worms In Their Water Supply
In a small east Texas town known as Old River-Winfree, little red and brown worms have infiltrated the water supply, and no one is sure how they got there. Many residents claim they have been finding the slimy little creatures coming out of their faucets, showers, and sprinklers, bringing samples in to city offices and demanding to know where they came from.
Town Mayor Joe Landry, says that residents first started reporting they found worms in the water on Monday, and have since ceased using the water supply until city officials have verified that the water has been cleaned. “People are not taking chances,” Landry told the Houston Chronicle. Landry, along with other officials, has been using city money to buy bottled water for residents since he was notified of the problem. But the mayor says water is going quickly, and that in order to keep up with demands, the city has also opened three men’s and women’s showering facilities in the city office.
Though the city has been making persistent efforts to help its residents, people are still demanding answers to why their water has been contaminated by living organisms. Sandy Cook, a woman living in the Woodland Acres Subdivision says that she and her husband first found the worms when the filter over their sink faucet seemed to be full.
“He undid the filter to our faucet and it was full (of worms),” Cook told ABC13. “Like tannish brown and some of them were red.”
Cook, as well as other city officials have called the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the state agency responsible for overseeing the water company, and officials say they will be around within the week to collect samples.
Right now, many are pointing fingers at Old River-Winfree’s J and S Water Company, which has continued to insist it's not responsible for the worm contamination. J and S admits that it had a system failure a few days ago, which resulted in having to shut down the flow of water for 16 hours. However, it says this time was not long enough for worms to infiltrate the water supply. It has since flushed its system, and says it hasn't found any worms in its facilities, suggesting the problem may be happening within residents’ pipes.
When the mayor and residents scheduled a meeting with the water company on Wednesday, no representatives showed up despite promises they would.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s spokeswoman Andrea Morrow told the Chronicle that this type of contamination typically results from backflow into pipes or breaches in storage tanks. She says that the amount of time it will take for the problem to get resolved relies heavily on the extent of the issue.
Until then, residents are tasked with the cringe-worthy chore of cleaning out faucet aerators and washing machine hose screens to remove all the creepy-crawlies that are squirming about inside.