Majority Latino city endures years of toxic water in health ‘crisis’

“I have proof here of arsenic tests — positive on him, that were done by the Veterans Administration,” she testified about her husband, whose 2023 records show he had been diagnosed with “exposure to arsenic” before his death in February at age 79. “What I’m asking is for a health assessment of the community.”

State and federal records show that in each of the last 16 years, drinking water samples tested in this 17,400-person town near the Texas border have contained illegally high levels of arsenic, including in 2016 when levels reached five times the legal limit.