Worms infest Houston suburb water supply

Christie Duncan Zadrapa posted this photo on Facebook. She wrote, "Bottom view of bottle sample water taken from bath tub faucet today. SOME ARE STILL ALIVE!! But, I have decided not to take a video bc I'm already grossed out enough!" less Christie Duncan Zadrapa posted this photo on Facebook. She wrote, "Bottom view of bottle sample water taken from bath tub faucet today. SOME ARE STILL ALIVE!! But, I have decided not to take a video bc I'm ... more Photo: Facebook Photo: Facebook Image 1 of / 5 Caption Close Worms infest Houston suburb water supply 1 / 5 Back to Gallery

No one seems to know how worms got in the tap water, but residents in Old River-Winfree, a town of about 1,400 just 25 miles east of Houston, are drinking from bottles this week.

On Monday evening, the first residents of the Woodlands Acres Subdivision showed up at city offices with containers full of water and small red worms they say came out of their faucets, sprinklers and shower heads. Three days and dozens of reports later, Mayor Joe Landry said "people are not taking chances."

Landry's office has been using city money to buy bottled water to hand out to residents. When he spoke by phone with the Chronicle, he had just returned from the nearby Dollar General to restock on the water supply that was going quickly. They've handed out at least a thousand bottles he said, and they'd have to buy a pallet this afternoon to keep up with demand.

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He also opened up three men's and three women's shower facilities in the city office for any resident to use.

He said that's all he can do at this point to address the problem. J&S Water, the town's private water utility, has kept mum on how the worms got in the water. Landry said all he's been told is that J&S had an electrical problem and their chlorinator stopped working. J&S did not immediately respond to inquiries from the Chronicle, and Landry said they did not show up to a meeting with city officials and local TV news yesterday.

"We're hoping for an update as to where we need to go with the situation from here," he said. "We're hoping for directives. Right now we don't have any answers."

Those directives will come from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which will visit Old River-Winfree today to test water safety and try to identify a solution.

"We'll be working with the city to identify where the breach occurred and how to fix the breach and flush the system," said TCEQ spokeswoman Andrea Morrow.

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She said this type of contamination can occur from backflow into pipes or breaches in storage tanks, but the causes for the current episode remain unknown. Just how long it will take to correct it, she said, depends on the extent of the problem.

In the meantime, residents have taken to a Facebook page for the Woodland Acres Subdivision to collaborate and vent. They're sharing information about bottled water and showers available to the community, reporting on utility efforts to inspect or flush water systems and offering tips on how to recover from the slimy infestation.

"My daughter showed me a screen on a sprinkler with worms in it," wrote one user on the Woodland acres subdivision Facebook page. "After a couple of more days of chlorination, and these things die out, clean your faucet aerators and washing machine hose screens."