Kenedy has to eat a $29,400 fine assessed to them by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), but the city administrator says the money won’t be leaving the city.

The large chunk of change was a penalty for Kenedy doing two things wrong: treating too much sewage one month and not sending a sewage treatment report another month.

"The operator (of the sewer plant) didn’t submit a report — a Veolia employee. There’s no contesting that at all. The other two were technical violations where we exceeded the amount of effluent that was supposed to be treated," City Administrator Walter Hill said.

Instead of writing a $29,400 check to the TCEQ, though, the commission will allow Kenedy to spend the money upgrading their sewage treatment system to handle the extra volume.

$2,500 of the fine attributed to a Veolia Water employee’s error will be Veolia’s responsibility, Hill said.

The city also recently received a notice from the TCEQ regarding the arsenic levels in their drinking water.

"We had to put out a notice to all the customers that we didn’t pass the newest regulation. We missed it by just a very small amount," Hill said. "In the past, the (acceptable arsenic levels) had been 20 times what they are now and they pulled it down. There was no money penalty, but we had to put a notice out."

Hill said right now there’s no danger in continuing to drink the water and expressed confidence the city would have their arsenic levels below the maximum allowed level within a month.

Water well results on the city’s newest well have not come back yet, but Hill said he expects the well will be low in arsenic, helping greatly in alleviating the system’s overall arsenic levels.