Larry Weppler on Securing a Water Supply
Before infrastructure could be built, a reliable water source had to be secured. Larry Weppler, Vice President and Precinct 1 Director, shares how early partnerships helped make that possible.
Transcript
Transcript edited for clarity and readability.
We had looked at numerous ways of getting water rights. We went to the San Jacinto River Authority, and we went to the Brazos River Authority. Of course, the City of Houston owned most of the water rights in this area, so we ultimately settled on working with the City.
We did have some issues starting out regarding what the City wanted to charge us. During that process, there was a change in city managers at the City of Houston, and he came in and said we should all pay the same for water. That kind of broke the dam, and we started talking about paying the City what it costs them for raw water, paying them to treat that water—our share of those costs—and contributing our share toward building the new surface water treatment plant.
That’s what really kicked everything off and got things moving. Once we had a reliable supply of water, we knew where to start building our infrastructure and moved forward from there.
