Looks like the need for smart, affordable water conservation solutions is only going to increase over time:

Local cities staying in water conservation mode despite rain
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September 13, 2009 2:29 PM
Jared Janes
The Monitor

WESLACO — Don’t expect heavy rainfall to cause this city to ease up on its water conservation efforts any time soon.

Like other parts of the Rio Grande Valley, much needed rainfall has refilled reservoirs and quenched dry lawns in Weslaco, but the city’s plight has as much to do with an outdated water treatment plant as with the drought.

Weslaco has no plans to move out of the Stage 2 water conservation mode it initiated last month, and other cities indicated they also expect to keep asking residents to conserve water.

In Weslaco, demand from users has exceeded capacity on a regular basis at a water treatment plant that’s about 65 years old.

The plant was pumping out more than the 8.2 million gallons of water per day the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality allows in its permit, said Francisco Castellanos, the interim city manager.

The city is looking at stop gap measures like a new water well, bigger and better motors and other tweaks to make its plant more productive, he said. Making those fixes adds an extra 2 million gallons in capacity to the plant.

Until improvements are made, he said, the city’s water problem isn’t going away.

“What the drought did was exacerbate the problem,” he said. “A spell of wet weather doesn’t come anywhere near solving the problem for us. It helps us to cope.”

Edinburg doesn’t have capacity issues at its plant, but it’s still planning to keep the conservation level where it’s been since 2008.

At the height of the heat, Edinburg’s new plant was running at 80 percent of capacity, said David Salinas, director of utilities. With the recent rainfall, demand on the city’s system eased off to where it was this spring.

Students who returned to schools that are required to have low flow urinals and toilets provides a break, he said. Several efforts to remind residents of the mandatory conservation, including its first class on Sept. 17, also helped.

“We felt if we didn’t advise the citizens we were in this situation, we would up in more dire straits,” he said. “We were being a little more proactive, but this rain has helped some.”

Most cities are aware that temperatures could still heat up even if fall is just around the corner, said Pharr utilities director David Garza, whose city has also opted to stay at Stage 2 water conservation.

A streak of days where the temperature topped 100 degrees put pressure on landscaping as well as aging underground pipes.

The heat caused clay to expand or shift and break water pipes, he said. Pharr was repairing seven to eight breaks a day and coping with the water loss from those breaks.

Garza doesn’t expect to see pipes breaking with such frequency until next summer but the recent rainfall won’t cause him to expect a complete end to the heat.

“This is the Valley,” he said. “We’ve experienced 90s in November and December. It’s nothing new to us.”