{"id":271491,"date":"2026-04-29T15:30:27","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T15:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/271491\/"},"modified":"2026-04-29T15:30:27","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T15:30:27","slug":"el-paso-city-council-oks-plan-to-rein-in-scam-water-notices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/271491\/","title":{"rendered":"El Paso City Council OK\u2019s plan to rein in \u2018scam\u2019 water notices"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">EL PASO, Texas (<a data-yga=\"{\" ylinkelement=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ktsm.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"elm:link;elmt:article_link;slk:KTSM;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">KTSM<\/a>) \u2013 El Paso city Rep. Chris Canales held up a flyer with the word \u201ccaution\u201d in large bolded words from his seat on the dais at City Hall.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The flyer said \u201cyour water may be contaminated, call us immediately,\u201d mimicking similar literature left at El Paso homes. Canales\u2019 example also had a made-up phone number with the last digits spelling out \u201cwe-scam-u.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">\u201cThis particular leaflet is a generic one I made. Other than that phone number, every element on that flyer is one that has appeared on a real advertisement here in El Paso,\u201d Canales said. \u201cSome of them also show a generic water droplet logo that looks very similar to El Paso Water\u2019s logo or elements that look like the City logo.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Canales said an estimated tens of thousands of these letters have caused confusion and harm for residents who are led to believe they need to contact numbers listed on the flyers thinking it is a notice from the El Paso Water utility.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">\u201cThis is one of those issues that sounds really small until you talk to people about it and you realize how widespread of a problem it is,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The City Council unanimously approved Canales\u2019 proposal to draft a new city ordinance requiring letters to identify what businesses are making them and to state they are not on behalf of the City or El Paso Water. The flyers would also be required to be bilingual or risk penalties.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Not complying with the proposed ordinance could result in a warning, a civil penalty or end up as a Class C misdemeanor charge.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">It is unclear when the city administration will bring back a drafted city ordinance for the council to vote on.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\"><a data-yga=\"{\" ylinkelement=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ktsm.com\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"elm:link;elmt:article_link;slk:For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KTSM 9 News.;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \"> For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KTSM 9 News. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) \u2013 El Paso city Rep. Chris Canales held up a flyer with the word&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":271492,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[20162,138,8178,140,139,5768,100991],"class_list":["post-271491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-el-paso","tag-chris-canales","tag-el-paso","tag-el-paso-city","tag-el-paso-headlines","tag-el-paso-news","tag-el-paso-water","tag-phone-number"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}