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30 times reprimanded for negligent acts — keep a job for which he had no aptitude or conscience for the well-being of 10,000 souls. I asked via a written question submitted to moderator and RGISC executive director Tricia Cortez for Judge Valdez why Amaya had been allowed to keep his job, and Valdez answered, “Action should have been taken,” and after recounting a story in The Laredo Morning Times, he then placed the blame on former County Utilities director Tomás Rodriguez. When Valdez asked for a show of hands for residents of Río Bravo and El Cenizo, few hands were raised. El Cenizo Mayor Raul Reyes observed, “There were people there from our communities, but for many of them they were being spoken to in a language they don’t speak or understand. It’s curious how well elected officials can speak perfect Spanish when they come to ask for our votes, but not so well when they are discussing something as important as clean water and public safety.“ Reyes, a polite well-spoken man, addressed Valdez and Montemayor during the public comments period near the end of the meeting. He called them out on their failure to remove the inept water plant director Amaya by stating, “Much could have done with the removal of one person.” Montemayor, who took office as a commissioner in January 2013, bristled at Reyes and took the exchange to a personal level, asking if Reyes not worked for former Pct. 1 Commissioner Frank Sciaraffa and had he not informed Sciaraffa of the water problems, and had Sciaraffa done anything about them. “I was up there as a resident, as a consumer, and as a representative for the people of El Cenizo,” Reyes later said. “I didn’t mean to offend him. Commissioner Montemayor has been aware of the problems at
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the plant since he ran for office in 2012. Since he took office in January 2013, he has known about falsification of reports by Mr. Amaya, reprimands for negligence, and other problems, and yet as the person who represents us on the court, he remained silent and continued to let Mr. Amaya run the plant. They’ve all been silent and chose not to terminate him because he was so useful as a political fundraiser and vote getter.” He said Amaya’s indifference to the complaints of water customers and a rude cashier made for a lot of hard feelings. “If you reported an unusual color or an odor, you were told it was your pipes. If you said your bill ran high, instead of getting a meter reader to your property, you were told you probably had a leak. It was never their fault,” he said. Reyes asked Montemayor and Valdez for the County to form a local management advisory committee that would continue to monitor water quality and improvements at the plant, hear complaints from residents about the service and daily operation of the plant, and decide how to administer SEPs (Supplemental Environmental Projects) that the TCEQ might allow in lieu of monetary penalties that will be assessed for the violations of the Webb County Surface Water Treatment Plant. Of the Town Hall meeting’s outcome, Reyes said, “Someone acknowledging responsibility for our water problems, why the county chose to defend and keep the negligent plant director, and why for so long there has been such disregard for our health and well-being — that would have gone a long way to open dialogue and to restore the public’s trust in Webb County government.” He said that if the turnout at the meeting signaled apathy to some, it was really a message to the county that the residents of the area “are tired of the same old BS, the same promises, the lack of respect. They
don’t believe the water situation will improve or that the county cares about their welfare.” Reyes, a former Webb County employee, took issue with Valdez’s pronouncement that Amaya’s termination was not a matter for the Commissioners Court. “When I was terminated, it was placed on their agenda, and they acted on it.” Reyes said he commended engineer Pérez García for addressing problems at the plant and for putting those problems and their solutions before politics. Pérez García was the only representative of the county at the Town Hall Meeting who alluded to Amaya’s dismal, negligent performance, albeit nominally, stating, “I am by no means defending actions taken previously.” The engineer said the violations of the water plant represented “a perfect storm of errors” that led to serious health threats. He said that his goal to return the plant to its initial capability and to provide clean, U.S. standard drinking water began with assessing the plant’s failures and providing TCEQ certification training for 12 water plant employees. He referenced that Amaya had only one certified employee. He said that pumps changed out or repaired for intake at the river, instrumentation improvements, cleaned clari-
fiers and filters, pneumatic tools, and improvements to the delivery system were part of the $2 million invested in the plant in less than a year. Reyes said returning the plant to its initial capacity should include using the plant’s state-of-the-art UV treatment capabilities that have never been used. Gloria Romo, one of the last of the area residents to comment at the meeting summed up sentiments for what had been accomplished at the Town Hall Meeting with, “You are saying very pretty things. The water has been dirty for years. We keep getting sick and so do the children. What has been resolved? We are in January and we are still getting sick. Who’s paying for the medicines?” Mayor Reyes, who has lived in El Cenizo since he moved there with his parents in 1992, observed, “Webb County ignores us out here. We are two small communities with many residents who live below the state’s poverty level. Our communities lack resources and manpower. Rest assured that if we each could afford a city attorney, we would find ourselves at the table of governance.” Asked if he thought the water quality has improved, Reyes said, “I can’t say. Just yesterday it smelled weird. No one is drinking from their taps.”
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