Transcript
Transcript edited for clarity and readability.

Jim Box, who was a land developer I met in 1975 was the chair of the Harris-Galveston Subsidence District (HGSD) for about 20 years.

Subsidence had become a terrible issue that resulted in the creation of the Subsidence District. It had started requiring conversion in Galveston and southeast Harris County and moved west.

By the late 1990s, it was clear that the West Harris County area that encompasses the current Authority would be required to convert.

The planning started with, “How do we do that?” A nonprofit corporation was created to study a conversion.

The two players from what is now Allen Boone Humphries and Robinson (ABHR) were Jim Boone and Alex Garcia, who were the leaders of the ABHR team in those early years of the nonprofit.

The North Harris County Regional Water Authority (NHCRWA) had been created years before and, let’s just say kindly, had been beset with many controversies.

When we started talking about creating an authority in the west, there was a lot of resistance among the MUDs because they had all watched what happened in North Harris County.

The most important thing I did personally was suggest, “Let’s let the MUDs elect the board of directors of the Water Authority.”

Once we did that, and we drew districts that encompassed multiple MUDs so each of those areas got to elect a director, the anti-authority sentiment went away.

They said, “Okay, we know we have to do this, and there’s no way we can individually negotiate a contract with the City of Houston.”

In 2001, Trey Lary, who is also a partner in ABHR, and I, who worked the legislative side for ABHR, got the legislation written and then went to Austin and got it passed.

Bill Callegari was the House sponsor, and Senator Jon Lindsay was the Senate sponsor.

I don’t remember that we had any particular great controversy over this authority compared to any other district we got created. It is always a challenge to work the Legislature, but I don’t think we had any particular opposition to getting the Authority created.

The next time I really got involved was when we started negotiating the contract between the City of Houston, North Harris County Regional Water Authority, the Central Harris County Regional Water Authority, and later the North Fort Bend Water Authority.

That contract negotiation lasted forever. It went on for years because it was a very complex deal.

This is a massive project that starts at the Trinity River and goes all the way to Katy. I don’t know what that is—100 miles.

Negotiating that contract was very difficult. We had four Authorities in the room, each with its own set of lawyers. The City had a set of lawyers. Everybody had an engineer. Everybody had an opinion.

It took a long time to work through that.

I would say that was the most difficult part of the entire transaction—getting that contract with the City worked out.

Since the City owns all the surface water in the region, there was really no other alternative. Everybody had looked for alternatives, and there were none. They had all the water, so guess who we were going to do business with?

Once the Authority got up and running and Jim and Alex took care of the Authority, I only became involved if some unusual circumstance came up.

The Subsidence District had set a short time frame for WHCRWA’s conversion date.

The last thing I did in 2012 before I retired was go to the Subsidence District and say, “Guys, here’s where we are. We have an agreement. Everybody is moving forward with engineering, permitting, and all these things as fast as we can, but we have to push the deadline off so we have time to actually get it done.”

By that point, all the authorities and the City had credibility with the Subsidence District that we were acting in good faith and moving forward.

So HGSD pushed back the date, and then I retired.

The whole project has been under design and construction since 2012, and I think it will be completely finished by maybe 2027.

Watch more from The People Behind the Progress Video Series:
https://www.whcrwa.com/people-behind-the-progress/