Colorado River Municipal Water District John W. Grant, General Manager TWCA Annual Meeting March 8, 2012 How the Drought Has Affected Business

1. Colorado River Municipal Water District
John W. Grant, General Manager
TWCA Annual Meeting
March 8, 2012
How the Drought Has Affected Business
CRMWD is a Special Law District created in 1949 to supply wholesale raw water in the
west Texas region. Originally we delivered raw water to our member cities which are
Odessa, Big Spring and Snyder.
Our system has grown over the years and today we have 12 municipal customers, 14
major industrial customers and over 300 rural users in the Permian Basin, Concho
Valley and Big County areas of the State. We also sell some water, on a limited basis,
to the oil and gas industry.
In the early 1950s our total service area population was less that 50,000, today we
supply all or part of the raw water needs of almost 500,000 people.
We began to see the beginnings of the current drought in the fall of 2008 with fewer and
less intense rainfall events and reduced inflow or runoff to our lakes.
Our primary source of water supply is surface water which typically supplies 100
percent of our needs. We have three lakes we can take water from. Today Lake J.B.
Thomas is 1.2 percent full, we are still pumping from Thomas to the City of Snyder; the
E.V. Spence Reservoir is 0.4 percent full, we stopped pumping from Spence in
September of 2011; and the O.H. Ivie Reservoir is 17.8 percent full.
With low lake levels and no inflow to blend with the water remaining in the reservoirs it
does have an impact on water quality. We are seeing higher levels of suspended solids
and dissolved solids such as chlorides.
In 2011, because of higher than normal temperatures and high winds, evaporation of
water from the lakes was well above normal.
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2. Over the last few years we have spent well over $3.0 million to construct dams, floating
barges, canals, channels and pipelines within the lake basins to move water around so
we can pump as much water out of the lakes as possible.
The District has several different types of water supply contracts; for our member cities
we supply 100 percent of their needs; we have other contracts where we deliver a
certain quantity of water to a customer at a certain flow rate and we even have other
contracts where the customer will take water directly from the lake and build their own
facilities to transport the water. Generally customers with a fixed contract quantity of
water have other sources of water that they can use.
We operate two separate water systems, our raw water system that supplies water for
municipal and industrial use and our diverted or brackish water system which supplies
mining and industrial water mostly to oil companies.
All of our contracts have one thing in common, when you are in a drought like we are
today its “share and share alike” when you have limited water supplies or limited
pumping capacity.
Because of the different types of contracts we have customers may be rationed based
on the capacity of our pipeline system, on the quantity of water remaining in the lake or
both.
In 2011, for the first time in the District’s history, we rationed water to our municipal
customers who take water from our raw water pipeline system. This rationing was done
because of system capacity issues. Deliveries were limited to 80% of what they
normally use during the summer. Ironically our total deliveries for 2011 were just about
what they have been for the last 5 years, this is because when the cities set limits on
times when people could water, everyone watered during those times.
Beginning April 1st of 2012 we are limiting deliveries to all customers to just above what
they use in the winter. This rationing is to make the quantity of surface water we have
available last as long as we can.
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3. If we ration water to our customers and limit it to the quantity of water that they typically
use during the months of December, January and February we may be able to extend
our surface water supplies an additional 90 to 120 days or three to four months.
If we don’t ration water to wintertime use our projections show that that we will run out of
surface water in January of 2013. This is just 10 months from now.
Now you ask the question, what have we been doing and what are we doing today
to ensure a water supply for our customers.
1) We began meeting with our municipal customers in February of 2010 and even made
a trip to Austin in March of 2010 to inform elected officials of the drought in our area and
our water situation. We were preparing to ration water in 2010 however we got just
enough inflow to our lakes that we did not have too.
2) Since October of 2010 we have been having monthly meetings with our municipal
customers to continue to inform them of the water situation and what activities the
District is undertaking regarding water supply.
3) Beginning February 1st 2011 the District limited deliveries to 90 percent of what we
normally deliver in the summer. This gave the cities a few months to prepare for this
reduction before the peak summer water use season.
4) Because we did not get any inflow to the lakes during the spring of 2011 deliveries
were further reduced to 80 percent of summertime usage beginning July 1st 2011.
5) Beginning the 1st of April 2012 water deliveries to our customers will be limited to just
above their historic wintertime water usage.
All of our municipal customers implemented and in most cases have modified the
provisions in their Water Conservation and Drought Contingency Plans to meet the
limits we set.
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4. The biggest issue everyone has faced with rationing water is “CULTURE SHOCK”
because the District and the majority of our customers have never had to ration water
before.
There are still people in our area that are in denial that we are in a drought and we are
running out of surface water, and because of the economic boom we are experiencing
with oil and gas we also have those that say “I don’t care how much the water cost, or
how many fines I get, I have the money so I want the water!”
6) CRMWD served as the facilitator for our municipal customers to develop a regional
water awareness program that uses TV, radio, newspapers, billboards, a web site and
social medial to get the word out about the drought and what people can do to conserve
water.
7) The District is in the process of trying to reactivate 5 emergency wells in the City of
Snyder which will produce about half of the city’s wintertime water needs.
8) In July of 2011 our Board approved the construction of a 4-1/2 mile 18-inch diameter
pipeline across the lake basin at Thomas to be able to supply water to the City of
Snyder from the Spence or Ivie Reservoirs or from our groundwater well fields in Ward
County. This pipeline was completed 2 weeks ago.
9) In 2000 the District began looking at alternate sources of water supply for our area
with no thought of the current drought in mind. For our area all of the better quality or
fresh water supplies have been developed so we started looking at desalination of
brackish water and the reuse of water.
After 10 years of study, planning and design the District started construction in July of
2011 on a 2.0 MGD Raw Water Production Facility in Big Spring. This facility has the
capability to be expanded to about 5.0 MGD. This facility is nothing more than a
membrane water treatment plant with desalination and UV disinfection permitted by the
TCEQ to produce raw water for municipal and industrial use. The produced raw water
will then be blended into our raw water pipeline system and delivered to the water
treatment plants of our municipal customers for treatment again.
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5. Did I mention that the 1st source of water for this plant is the treated wastewater effluent
from the City of Big Spring’s Wastewater Treatment Plant?
What we have with our raw water production facility is an inland desalination plant that
reuses treated wastewater effluent water to produce raw water for municipal and
industrial use. This facility is scheduled for completion and start-up in December of
2012.
10) In June of 2010 we completed the purchased a groundwater well field from
Luminant Generation in Ward County. Since the 1950s this well field had been used to
supply water to the Permian Basin Steam Electric Power Plant just outside of
Monahans. We were able to acquire this well field because Luminant is taking this
power plant off line.
Our plan was to add a few wells and connect this well field to our raw water pipeline
system. It would be a small source of water if we ever needed it and the groundwater
would increase our long-term water reserves.
11) Now it’s a different story! We are moving forward with a $135 million project to
more fully develop this field and build a 42-mile long pipeline that can deliver 30 million
gallons of groundwater a day. This project will also reverse the flow of water in our raw
water transmission system; instead of pumping surface water from east to west we will
be pumping groundwater from west to east.
This project, combined with an existing well field we have and a pipeline that can deliver
15 million gallons of water per day will give us access to 45 million gallons of
groundwater per day.
Why is 45 million gallons of water significant to us? 45 million gallons of water per day
will meet the wintertime needs of Odessa, Big Spring, Snyder, Midland and Stanton or
about 250,000 people.
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6. What we are doing is developing an emergency water supply system to meet wintertime
demands from groundwater, a 180 degree change in direction from a system that
typically gets 100 percent of its supply from surface water.
This well field and pipeline project will be completed and in operation by December
2012, one month before our projections show we will run out of surface water if we do
not do additional rationing in 2012.
To give you a time line for this project our Board approved moving forward with the
Ward County System Expansion Project in May 2011, approved professional services
agreements in June 2011 and the issuance of Water System Revenue Bonds in July
2011. Today we are in the process of drilling 21 new water wells, building 4 new pump
stations, staring to lay 42 miles of 48 and 42 inch diameter pipeline and will soon start
construction on approximately 20 miles of well field collection pipeline.
I know as if it sounds like we are cutting it close, running out of surface water and
having new sources of supply available at the same time and we are.
I’m also sure that if the District had said in June 2010, when we purchased the well field,
let’s build a $135 million dollar project just in case we needed it someday that we would
have been run out of town!
11) AND if all this is not enough our silt survey in November 2011 of the intake channel
to the Ivie Pump Station showed we have about 9 feet of silt in the channel and even
more around the intake tower, so much in fact that we cannot use the bottom gate on
the tower until we remove the silt. We issued a notice to proceed to a dredging
contractor this week and substantial completion for this project is scheduled for the end
of May 2012.
That’s “How the drought has affected our business”.
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