Why some Round Rock residents’ faucet water has a yellow tint

ROUND ROCK, Texas (KXAN) — In some Round Rock residents’ homes, the water coming out of the faucets has been a yellowish tint for the past couple of weeks.

Trey Ogier has lived in the city of Round Rock for eight years, and in recent weeks, his family has noticed their tap water being a yellowish tint.

“It looked almost like creek water,” Ogier said. “My wife was even saying—when it was at its worst—putting her hand in it, you could almost not see her hand.”

When KXAN visited Ogier’s house on Friday, the color faded to be much clearer. However, Ogier said that’s happened before in the past couple of weeks, and the color returned to yellow soon after.

“In the last probably 24 or 48 hours, the water has gotten significantly better,” Ogier said. “Now it’s just got kind of a yellowish tint, so it looks like it’s improving, but, but it’s still certainly not perfectly clear.”

Ogier’s water supplier buys water from the city of Round Rock. Michael Thane, Round Rock’s Executive Director of Public Works, said that water having such discoloration is most likely due to the massive runoff following severe flooding in July.

“When you get that large amount of rainfall—the runoff coming into the lake—a lot of it is sediment, organics, manganese, those types of materials coming into our raw water source,” said Thane. “It is safe to drink. We’re meeting all the standards, but the aesthetics have that yellow tint appearance, and it’s due to the manganese in the lake water.”

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, manganese is a “naturally occurring element that is a component of over 100 minerals.” Thane explained that making sure the water is safe to drink is the “number one priority,” and after that, they work on things like taste, odor, and appearance.

“We are trying to balance both of those, but we need to make sure that water quality remains priority,” said Thane. “Because of the amount of flood waters coming to the lake, some of the aesthetics sometimes have an appearance.”

Evan Larson is the Superintendent of the Water Treatment Plant in Round Rock, and he said that manganese is hard metal to treat.

“It makes our coagulant less effective, so we have to alter the treatment process and apply different methods to get the water safe enough to drink, and that way it meets all the compliance standards set by the TCEQ and the EPA,” Larson said. “So manganese is coming through. It’s causing a less effective process.”

Larson emphasized that when the water is done being treated at the plant, it is in fact clear. The discoloration happens after it leaves the plant, due to the manganese in the water reacting with oxygen and certain pipe metals.

“It takes a little time and feedback and the public working together with us to kind of tell us where these issues are,” Larson said. “When we don’t no longer have these calls of any colors, we know that we’re in the right spot.”