Roscoe residents had their water shut off Nov. 5 for the installation of new water mains, and days later, some households still had no running water at all. Amber Serrano said her home was one of them, left without service since Thursday morning even as most of the city’s supply came back online.
Most of Roscoe’s water supply had returned, but Serrano’s home remained without service, KTXS reported. Serrano said she contacted the city office Friday to ask when service would return and was told staff did not know.
Serrano’s household includes three children. She described the added burden of meeting basic needs without running water, including the water needed to flush a toilet: “To flush a toilet, you have to have at least a gallon of water. So for a family of five,” she said. Families without service also had to find other ways to bathe and wash clothes.
Outdated Maps Slow the Repair Work
The repair process was complicated by outdated pipeline maps, which made it difficult for workers to determine which lines served specific homes, KTXS reported.
Roscoe’s mapping problem reflects a broader challenge for small Texas water systems, where limited records can complicate maintenance. A 2022 survey found the average installation year for small- and midsize rural water systems was 1966, while many smaller systems lack the detailed infrastructure records that larger utilities keep, a statewide infrastructure review found. The survey does not establish the age of Roscoe’s pipes, but it underscores how incomplete records can make locating and repairing lines harder.
The city provided water to households still without service. Serrano said crews gave her bottled water and brought in a tank of potable water that morning, according to KTXS. Some residents nevertheless said the minimum supply did not cover daily needs.
Regional planning documents identify Roscoe’s reliance on a single water source as a potential vulnerability. That assessment concerns drought or a loss of supply generally; it does not identify the cause of this outage, according to the Texas Water Development Board’s Nolan County summary.
What Regional Plans Say About Backup Water
The 2021 Brazos G Regional Water Plan identified Roscoe as a sole-source entity with a 2010 population under 7,500. For qualifying sole-source entities, the plan lists potential emergency options such as trucking in water, importing supply from a nearby entity, developing a local groundwater well or using an existing emergency interconnection. These are planning options, not confirmation that any were available to Roscoe during this outage.
Frustration Mounts Over the City’s Pace
Serrano said she did not believe the city was responding with urgency, given that residents had gone without water through the weekend. “It's just not acceptable. It's not professional how they're going about it,” she said, adding that she believes the situation needs to change.
City officials told KTXS crews were working to restore service and hoped to have water back that night. It was not immediately clear whether that timeline held for the remaining affected households.
State rules also set a reporting requirement for water disruptions: since Sept. 1, 2023, residential public water systems must immediately notify the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality when an unplanned condition causes an outage, under a requirement established by House Bill 3810. A boil-water notice is a separate warning used when water may be unsafe or pose an acute health risk. The outage account does not establish whether Roscoe filed an outage notification or whether a boil-water notice was required.
