Maria Martinez has spent the last fourteen years of her life living and raising her family in Hueco Tanks, an unincorporated community outside El Paso without access to potable water. Every two weeks for years, Martinez has had water delivered by hauler to fill a three-thousand gallon tank on her property. Each delivery costs ninety dollars — more if the delivery comes on a weekend — in addition to the hundreds of dollars she’s spent each month on bottled water to drink.

“I grew up in Juarez and I was able to drink the water from the faucet there, so moving into the US and not being able to drink the water from the faucet was very uncomfortable,” Martinez told Jacobin in Spanish.

Martinez, like a number of other Texans living close to the border, has for years been forced to buy bottled water for lack of an alternative. But according to a recent survey, a significant number of Texans also choose to drink bottled water because they don’t like how their water tastes or smells.