Transcript
Transcript edited for clarity and readability.

The water that we are getting, the City of Houston purchased the water rights back in the ’50s, or maybe the late ’40s. I forget the timeframe.

When the original West board was created, they talked to a bunch of places. Where can we get water? And the City was the only one out here that had water rights.

When we bought the water from the City through our original board, that kind of set the stage of what we were going to do and how we were going to do it.

Some of the details: when you get the water out of the Trinity River, you have to lift that water up with pump stations, put it in pipes and open canals, and force it uphill.

It’s about 25 to 30 miles from the Trinity to Lake Houston. It mixes with the Lake Houston water that’s already there and travels downstream until it’s picked up by another pump station and lifted up to the Northeast Water Purification Plant.

Then that is sent uphill again, trying to get to Houston. So from Trinity to Houston is about 25 miles, then through Houston is about 10 miles, and then from the Northeast Water Purification Plant out to our part of the West, not even the farthest extreme, is another 20 to 30 miles to get over to our Central Pump Station.

So that water is traveling, in some cases, 100-plus miles through canals, pipelines, pump stations, and all, to get to the end user.

I don’t know that everybody understands it’s a lot of effort to handle that kind of water for that long and get it to us, to where our residents get it, and they’re happy with it, and it’s treated and it’s good, clean water.

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