WHAT THE HEIGHTS DRINKS
By Jim Towers, M.JA. J.D.
Houston Heights Independent | August 2026 | Part One of an Ongoing Investigation
Chapter One: Don't Drink That
A city worker in full PPE stood in a trench on 11th Street, pointed at a broken water main, and said four words. He was holding his own bottled water. This is the water infrastructure investigation HHI has been building since that moment.
"Don't drink that."
Four words. The city worker in full PPE — yellow vest, hard hat, gloves — was standing in a trench on 11th Street in the Heights, city water flooding the excavation at his feet, one hand pointing at the broken main in the ground. His other hand was holding a bottle of water he had brought from somewhere else.
He was not drinking the water he was being paid to deliver. He had brought his own.
That image — that frame, that four-word statement — is the entire investigation in a single moment. Everything else in this piece is documentation of what that moment means.
THE PIPE IN THE GROUND
On May 7, 2026, contractors DIGCO and To-Me Construction were replacing water mains at two locations in the Houston Heights — on Nicholson at West 22nd Street and at a second location in the same corridor. What they were pulling out of the ground was not modern infrastructure in need of routine maintenance. It was terra-cotta and clay pipe from the late 1800s and early 1900s — original municipal water infrastructure from the period when the Heights was its own independent city, before Houston annexed it in 1918.
HHI photographed both excavations. The frames show: crumbling terra-cotta pipe fragments piled at the curb. A section of the old main still in the trench, repair clamps visible where the city had been patching the same pipe for decades rather than replacing it. A V-shaped corroded fragment isolated on the ground — the cross-section of a hundred-year-old pipe that had been carrying drinking water to Heights residents until the day it finally failed beyond patch. And down a closed residential street past three-story luxury construction: the gleaming new blue replacement main going in. The archaeology is visible. The old pipe is in the photographs. The new pipe is in the photographs. What you cannot see in the photographs — what requires reporting rather than documentation — is how long the city knew the old pipe was failing, how many times it was patched, how many boil water notices were issued for ZIP codes 77008 and 77009 in the years before replacement was authorized, and what it would cost the neighborhood to have a broken main fail near a gas line.
HHI has filed Texas Public Information Act requests with Houston Water and Houston Public Works for boil water notice history and infrastructure maintenance records for both ZIP codes. Those requests are pending.
THE PATRECE LEE CASE — 2023
In 2023, the Texas Rangers opened an investigation into Houston Public Works. What they found was a manager named Patrece Lee steering emergency water infrastructure contracts — the kind that get issued without competitive bidding because pipes are failing — to family members and associates. The kickbacks came back via Cash App.
Seven individuals were criminally charged. The investigation was documented by Investigative Reporters and Editors under the title DRAINED. In early 2025, Patrece Lee pleaded guilty and received a ten-year prison sentence.
The water infrastructure that Lee was supposed to maintain serves the same ZIP codes where HHI has documented terra-cotta pipe from 1900 being pulled out of the ground in 2026. The emergency contracts that were corrupted covered the same systems, the same pipes, the same public trust that has been failing in the same ways for over a century.
The fraud changes shape. The infrastructure fails on the same schedule regardless.
WHAT HHI FOUND — AND WHAT WE ARE STILL ASKING
Across two photo shoots — 11th Street and Nicholson at West 22nd — HHI documented active water main replacement operations removing original late-19th-century infrastructure from beneath Heights streets. Worker testimony on the ground confirmed the condition of the water. Photographic documentation shows the condition of the pipe.
What we do not yet have, because the city has not produced it:
The full boil water notice history for ZIP codes 77008 and 77009 going back ten years. The maintenance and repair history for the specific mains being replaced — how many patches, how many years, how many times the fix was deferred. The infrastructure assessment timeline: when did the city determine these mains needed replacement, and how long between that determination and the actual work beginning.
We also do not have a response from Houston Water or Houston Public Works to our questions about the current state of Heights water infrastructure more broadly. Those requests are on the public clock. The responses — or the absence of responses — will be published.
The city worker on 11th Street told us not to drink the water. We are taking him at his word and asking why.
THIS IS CHAPTER ONE
What the Heights Drinks is an ongoing HHI investigation. Chapter One documents the infrastructure failure visible in the street. Chapter Two will document the boil water notice history when records are produced. Chapter Three will document the city's response — or its silence.
The series will continue until the questions are answered or the city's failure to answer them becomes the answer.
That is what this publication exists to do. The Murrow standard. We go. We see. We come back and tell you what's out there. And we keep going back until the story is complete.
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