Houston Earns "Superior Drinking Water" Rating

The City of Houston drinking water supply received a "Superior Public Water System" designation by the Texas Natural Resources Conservation Commission recently.

The designation means Houston, which also supplies drinking water to many of its neighboring municipalities and utility districts, is the largest utility in Texas to achieve the status. The City has the fourth largest utility in the United States. Each one of its treatment plants and almost 200 wells were found to be "superior" after the commission's detailed annual inspection.

According to information from the office of Houston's Director of Public Works and Engineering, the City of Houston meets or betters all federal, state and local water quality standards. Affecting the lives of about 3.5 million people daily, the City uses about 59 per cent surface water and 41 per cent from groundwater sources, meaning that the City is on its way to meeting the state-mandated requirement for cities to convert to 80 per cent surface water before the year 2010 in order to control land subsidence.

The City delivers an average of 340 million gallons of water per day through four surface water plants and 184 wells feeding 92 separate groundwater plants. The City controls the water rights to 209 MGD in the San Jacinto River system (Lake Houston and Lake Conroe) and about 806 MGD in the Trinity River system (Lake Livingston).

In addition to Houston citizens, the City has numerous wholesale customers. The largest is Galveston County, the second largest is the City of Pasadena, followed by the cities of Clear Lake City, Baytown, the LaPorte Water Authority, Deer Park, Friendswood and various municipal utility districts (MUD's).

The City's biggest retail water customer is Anheuser Busch, which routinely uses 145.7 million gallons per month.

According to the City, the water system has met all compliance deadlines for the recently enacted Lead and Copper Rule and the Surface Water Treatment Rule; and operates its surface water treatment plants at a compliance level magnitude of three times better than required by the state for the inactivation of the microorganism Giardia. Using state-of-the-art treatment process monitoring equipment for years before the technology was required by recent regulations, has helped the City maintain its high rating, according to Public Works representatives.