Prairie View A&M University water supervisor Frederick Alexander wants to assure everyone that nothing is wrong with the water supply on campus despite various complaints from students.”There have never been any problems on this campus pertaining to the water supply,” said Alexander. “There are six wells on campus, and three containers that hold one million gallons, 500,000 gallons and 300,000 gallons, respectively. Each source is disinfected with chlorine before they are able to be pumped. Once a month, we send samples of our water to Houston to be checked out and if anything is wrong, they send the results to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and they inform us on how to handle the situation. But like I said, we’ve never had anything wrong with the water on this campus.”
The biggest complaints from students are that the water has a chlorine taste to it and sometimes the water itself is brown.
“The chlorine taste is due to the fact that the taps in the dorm rooms haven’t been used very much, and they need to be ‘broken in,’ so to speak. The water needs to have a chance to run through the pipes,” said Alexander.
The water supervisor added that the brown discoloration is from the rust in the pipes. “That part isn’t our fault, because our job is to run the water to the dorm areas. Once the water is over there, the rest is in the hands of the people in charge at the dorms. If some students are having brown water, they need to contact the people that are in charge at the dorms.”
Alexander said that students would be notified if something happened with the water supply.
“TCEQ will notify us and then we will in turn notify the public, and work on correcting the problem. Also, we will give everyone details on what they should do in the meantime. One such thing would be the ‘boiled water notice.’ In the event that there is a problem, we will recommend boiling the water before using it,” said Alexander.