Water has been an ongoing topic for the City of Wolfforth. Residents are currently under Stage 2 Water Restrictions. That’s looking to ease up in the future with their new filtration plant, but for now, the city is cracking down on water usage.
“It’s pretty easy to make it on your household water. It’s just you can’t irrigate as much as you want to when we’re on stage 2,” says Darrell Newsom, Wolfforth City Manager.
Newsom says the new electrodialysis reversal plant will contribute to some water changes once it’s officially up and running. It’s in the process of receiving approval from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, or TCEQ.
“We have a total of 16 water wells that we can produce from in the city, but some of them have higher levels of components where we can’t use those wells until the filtration actually starts. We’re short by about three or four wells and when we can’t use those wells to produce, we don’t have the capacity that we need to keep up with the really hot and dry days,” he says.
“The cooler, wetter weather has helped us quite a bit, but we’re going to stay on stage 2 until we actually can bring this plant online, and then bring those other wells online with it,” Newsom adds.
The system takes the raw well water and filters out things like high levels of fluoride. Then, the treated water is stored in a large water tank before arriving to homes.
“It’s a pretty linear process, you know…comes in, it gets treated, and it goes out,” Newsom says.
Newsom says they have been testing the system and it’s working exactly how it should. This proves to his team that everything is going well and working properly.
“It’s not only healthier for the people, it’s also healthy for their plants and lawns, because the pH levels are at a really nice balance,” Newsom says. “This plant is going to help us for the long-term to be able to use more diverse water sources.”
With the city growing as fast as it is, there is a higher demand for water. Newsom says that he and other city officials are already looking into drilling more wells to keep up with that growth. He also says they aren’t as worried about the quality of water from the wells with this new filtration system.
