exTRA by the Trinity River Authority of Texas

During Friendswood City Council’s June 7 meeting, Chad Nobles, senior account executive for Ameresco, explained the advantages of upgrading the city’s water meters. The council will consider a contract with Ameresco at its July meeting.

City Council put off a decision on whether to grant a wastewater service extension request to CWS Capital Partners in the environmentally sensitive Bull Creek Watershed at Thursday’s meeting. The postponement came after Council Member Leslie Pool announced that there was an agreement to put off the matter until July 29, the next Council meeting.

Due to elevated Grapevine Lake levels from ongoing rain, Grapevine is limiting the distribution of loanable life jackets to one location, according to city officials. The life jackets, provided by the Grapevine Fire Department, are currently available only at Rockledge Park. Normally, there are six life jacket “trees,” , which each offer 26 life vests, at city parks.

More than 700 city employees might be getting a bigger cut of Harlingen’s $22 million federal stimulus check. Meanwhile, city commissioners are planning to tap their share of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act’s first $10.9 million payment to fund a water plant upgrade and drainage projects while offsetting $3.6 million in revenue losses blamed on the coronavirus pandemic.

The city of Corpus Christi lifted its water usage restrictions Tuesday after enforcing them for more than six months.

The city entered into a Stage 1 Mild Water Shortage Watch in late December. At the time, the combined water levels at Lake Corpus Christi and Choke Canyon Reservoir, which feed water to the city, were at 39.8 percent.

Flooding of the Navasota River is causing adverse effects to the land of nearby property owners, some of whom have hundreds of acres underwater when the flooding occurs. Cheryl Langford is a rancher and one of those landowners. She says her land has been in her family for seven generations and over 150 years.

The U. S. Army Corps of Engineers announced the floodgates at Sam Rayburn Dam are now open and releasing water in addition to the water that had already been flowing through the electrical power generators.

Though weeks of rainfall throughout the Rio Grande Valley may have busted a regional drought, the rains have done little to fill the reservoirs that supply South Texas with water for municipal and agricultural use.

West Siders, recreational opportunities could be coming your way as part of President Joe Biden's $6 trillion budget. On Wednesday, the San Antonio River Authority announced that $2.34 million in Biden's budget was allocated to the Westside Creeks Ecosystem Restoration Project.

The San Antonio Water System will change a planned route for a sewage pipeline to avoid environmentally sensitive land that taxpayers paid $1.5 million to protect, according to the utility’s top executive. Instead of piping sewage across two properties enrolled in the City’s Edwards Aquifer Protection Program (EAPP), SAWS will route sewage to the south along Blanco Road, away from a planned housing development near the intersection of Blanco and Specht roads in unincorporated northern Bexar County, SAWS President and CEO Robert Puente told the San Antonio Report on Wednesday.

Despite flooding issues, recent rains have helped the local water supply heading into the summer months. May, which is historically the wettest month in Texas, brought above-average precipitation to a large area of the state. At Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, 7.77 inches of rain fell. Compare that to the 4.78 inches of rain we normally see during the month of May.

The Odessa City Council voted 4-3 on Tuesday to approve the use of a certificates of obligation bond to pay for a proposed $95 million major rehabilitation of the current water treatment plant. Their decision came after numerous residents pleaded with council to allow voters to decide on whether to pass a bond issue to pay for the water treatment plant improvements.

The City of Dallas announced Tuesday, June 8, it has once again been named the most “water wise” large city in the United States.

Dallas won in the 600,000+ population category of the 2021 Wyland National Mayor’s Challenge for Water Conservation.

The City of Melissa has unveiled a new\u00a0online\u00a0utility billing portal that gives residents the ability to monitor how much water they are using as well as the costs they are incurring.

The latest algae samples collected from Lake Travis continue to contain toxin levels that could be harmful to individuals or pets if ingested, according to a June 2 news release from the Lower Colorado River Authority. The toxin—dihydroanatoxin—is produced by cyanobacteria, sometimes called blue-green algae, and has been detected in Lake Travis since at least February.

Since summer 2019, the city of Austin’s Watershed Protection Department has grappled with harmful algae in its lakes, and a string of recent occurrences have led the department to ramp up its algae plan. In early April, amid what the city considered an “offseason,” low levels of dihydroanatoxin—a form of cyanobacteria—were detected in Lake Austin and Lady Bird Lake.