Transcript
Transcript edited for clarity and readability.

I was the president of the Association of Water Board Directors (AWBD) at the time. I had served on a committee that Mayor Brown put together that was meeting to talk about what the City of Houston was going to do with the surface water conversion.

I was a board director as well, so I was very, very familiar with what the problem was.

The Subsidence District had come out with its regulation, which required a 30% conversion by 2010. The North Harris County Regional Water Authority (NHCRWA) had created itself by statute, but in its statute, it had to put it out to popular vote, and it was in the process of getting ready to do that.

At the time, in my real job in the oil and gas business, I was negotiating a lot of contracts. I could just see the writing on the wall that it was going to be individual MUD districts dealing with the City of Houston if we didn’t do something about it.

I made a call to Wayne Ahrens, who I knew through my AWBD connection. They weren’t our engineer in the MUD. I also called Jim Boone, who I knew through the AWBD connection, and said, “Let’s have lunch. We’ve got to talk about this.”

We had lunch and said, “We need to get something kicked off. We need to find somebody to do it. We’re going to meet in two weeks.”

Two weeks later, we met, and they both looked at me and said, “Dan, you’re really the guy.”

I didn’t feel I had time, but I went ahead and made time, and that’s how it got started.

Watch more from The People Behind the Progress Video Series:
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