Gary Struzick on Recognizing the Limits of Groundwater
As groundwater levels declined, Gary Struzick, Assistant Vice President and Precinct 7 Director, recalls the moment his MUD recognized the need for a long-term solution. That realization helped drive early decisions to pursue surface water.
Transcript
Transcript edited for clarity and readability.
Hi, my name is Gary Struzick. I’m Assistant Vice President of the West Harris County Regional Water Authority.
I was on Copperfield MUD 208 for 24 years, and in the middle of that, we started seeing our groundwater levels drop and drop and drop. We had to take our water well pumps and drop them as deep as we could within the casing, and even then, we weren’t sure we would have water before it ran out.
So we were real worried. We put together a consortium of seven MUD districts out in Copperfield, and we all started asking, where can we get water? How is it going to work?
By that time, it was past 2001, and the Authority had been created. They were watching what was going on out there, so we started going to the Authority meetings to say, we need water—we’re going to need it.
Rather than fighting it or saying we didn’t want to be converted, we were volunteering to be the first group of MUDs that were converted, because we saw we were running out of water.
