Why Jeraine Root Is A Candidate

I moved to Brunswick Meadows in 2005 because I grew tired of driving 110 miles round-trip on my daily commute from Lake Conroe to downtown Houston. While I miss my home in the woods - it was a lovely house -



I enjoy having neighbors nearby and the convenience of living in the 'burbs. About a year after moving in, I was concerned when a notice was left on my door that there would be a meeting held at Christa Adair Park because of the EPA determination that our water supply was contaminated.

I attended the meeting, as did about 100 others living within the district boundaries of WCID #89 and I discovered, much to my chagrin, that most of the questions asked of the Board members and the "water expert" that was on hand, were not answered satisfactorily. And even more disconcerting was the seeming lack of a plan to address the problem beyond "more testing" being performed.

My niece, who is a chemical engineer and had been employed in the Harris County Public Health & Environmental Services Dept. as a water testing lab technician, accompanied me to this meeting. Her assessment of the meeting was that the "water expert" was downplaying what was indeed a dangerous level of contamination in our water supply. She urged me to immediately put carbon filters on all of my faucets, including the shower heads, because the particular contaminant was much more likely to be absorbed through the skin while showering than ingested. I did as she suggested. She also forwarded information to me about scrubbers that could be installed that would effectively deal with the problem at the source. I sent this information to Board President Smalls and asked to be kept informed of the progress that was being made. She told me to continue to watch the website for updates. Although President Smalls had promised at the open meeting at Adair Park that the WCID #89 website would be updated with regular reports, that never occurred.

To my knowledge, the scrubbers information was never suggested to the rest of the Board or ever considered at all. Two years later we received an annual report that stated the EPA guidelines had finally been met. That is when I decided to look more into this matter.

I made several open records requests, through the Freedom of Information Act, and had no success by dealing with either the Board or their attorney in getting the information I needed. After reporting my frustration to the Attorney General of Texas, I received word from President Smalls that the Board hired a new attorney to represent them, Chris Richardson.

Mr. Richardson was very helpful and delivered over 1500 pages of information to me, which I forwarded to my niece for review. She said that while the EPA guidelines were being met there were still high levels of contaminants, which can cause cancer, and contribute to cardiovascular problems. I'm keeping my faucets filtered!

I have also requested many more documents, available through the Freedom of Information Act, that have proved to me that our representatives on the Board have failed to address some of our most basic concerns - clean water, effective security, flood control, and good stewardship of our tax dollars. For these reasons, I am running for a place on the Board and hope you will support me. In my next post I will give more information about my personal qualifications for office.