Sand Branch, an unincorporated, majority-Black community about 14 miles from Dallas, has gone without clean drinking water for decades — even though it sits next door to the Dallas Water Utilities Plant. Residents rely on wells that Texas regulators found contaminated with coliform bacteria, and in one case E. coli, back in 1997. Officials deemed that water unsafe for public use, but never replaced it with anything.

The community has shrunk from an estimated 400 residents in the late 1990s to about 150 today, as families leave when they can't get by without basic services. A $450,000 state grant awarded in 2020 to help build water infrastructure has stalled, with no construction progress reported as of this year.

Local leader Christina Parks has stepped in to fill the gap herself — delivering bottled water, groceries and hot meals door to door — but mutual aid can't replace real infrastructure, especially after a grassfire tore through the community in August and damaged nearby homes with no hydrants or running water to help contain it.

Texas state Rep. James Talarico has called the situation "a moral failure," saying "access to clean drinking water is a basic human right," according to a statement he gave to The 19th. Yet Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price, whose district includes Sand Branch, has favored paying residents to relocate over funding the water and sewer lines they need to stay.

We're asking Commissioner Price and the Texas Water Development Board to finish what they started: release the stalled funding, finish the infrastructure plan, and give Sand Branch residents the clean water every community deserves. Sign the petition to bring permanent water to Sand Branch — before another family is forced to leave.