‘We still don’t know how to fix it’: Marlin, Texas water crisis continues as council approves portable treatment plants

MARLIN, Texas (KWTX) — The Marlin City Council approved the procurement of two portable water treatment plants in an emergency session on Sunday to help restore drinking water to the city.

The council allocated $200,000 to fund the plants.

Gov. Greg Abbott issued a state of disaster for Falls County on Saturday amid the ongoing water crisis in Marlin. Marlin Mayor Susan Byrd said the proclamation would allow the city to use water plants not approved by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality while the city’s plant is out of commission.

“The governors 30-day proclamation allows us to use this until we find an appropriate TCEQ treatment option,” Byrd said.

Marlin City Council has approved the two temporary plants for a period of up to 30 days.

“This is a temporary fix,” Byrd said. “Right now, despite the facts that we’ve had dozens and dozens of engineers at the water plant, we still don’t know how to fix it.”

While Marlin has faced water issues before, Byrd believes the city’s plant not functioning has made this one of the worst outages the city has seen since she’s been Mayor.

“You can have leaky faucets and try to put in valves to redirect water,” Byrd said. “But when your water plant is down it’s down. You will not have water.”

Byrd said the city has had a team of engineers inspect the plant to find the cause of the outage. She said they cannot agree on a cause.

“We think what happened is a week ago Friday there was a unique series of power surges and outages,” Byrd said. “Right now, our best guess is that affected the plant. So, they’re going to have to take it literally from stem to stern to figure out if it can be repaired.”

Byrd expects the plants to arrive on Tuesday. Interim city manager Justin Parker said the plants would take 12 hours to set up. Byrd said the city’s water towers would then have to be refilled before drinkable water could be restored to Marlin.

Copyright 2025 KWTX. All rights reserved.