Transcript

Transcript edited for clarity and readability.

I’m Michael Thornhill. I’m currently a Director on the West Harris County Regional Water Authority for Precinct 4, representing those districts in that area.

I worked for an operations company, and I was on a MUD board. Then there was an opening, and one of the attorneys for the Authority thought that I might be a good fit.

When I started, it was all paperwork. You’re trying to line things up, trying to get the easements, just getting the alignment to start with.

After a few years, you actually started bringing in pipes that were 94 inches in diameter. The project itself is bringing water from the northeast side of Harris County, where we’re pulling water out of Lake Houston to get it to the City of Houston’s plant.

It starts with pumping water out of the Trinity River at 500 million gallons a day and putting it into Lake Houston. Then we can pump water out of Lake Houston and expand the plant itself.

I think it was originally 80 million gallons a day, and now it’s going to be upwards of 400 million gallons a day. Then we take our portion of that, which is roughly 25%, and pump that water all the way across the north side of Houston.

It’s a huge project because most of this area is already developed. I was able to go down into one of these tunnel pits, and it was kind of a humbling experience seeing how big the pipe was that we were walking through—and knowing it was going to be full of water.

Those pipes, that size, are bringing water all the way across town, with some going to North Harris County Regional Water Authority, some to the West, and some to North Fort Bend Water Authority.

There’s not a lot of surface water around that you can use for that amount of demand, so it was the right thing to do to partner with the City and the other authorities.