Thousands of gallons of water went missing in Big Lake, and for weeks, it was unknown how the water was disappearing.
“We were afraid that we were going to run out of water, said Big Lake City Manager Evelyn Ammons.
Days went by and the city officials still couldn’t find the answer.
“We were looking everywhere and we couldn’t find it — we were afraid it was being stolen out of fire hydrants,” said Ammons.
City Manager Evelyn Ammons says the town’s water usage skyrocketed in just a matter of days.
“It just almost doubled from what we had been using, say 500,000 gallons a day to over a million a day,” said Ammons.
After checking water meters across the city and coming up dry, they decided to call for help which costed the $30,000.
“By then we were at our wits end, and we hired a leak survey company to come in from Austin,” said Ammons.
And it turns out, the problem comes from where the town tees off, the Reagan County Municipal Golf Course.
“We found that the meter had been turned on at the golf course. We think they might have just turned it on because one of their wells went down and then forgot to turn it off,” said Ammons.
An expensive mistake, and the course will be billed $41,000 so the city can pay the water district.
“It was partly our fault because we didn’t catch it earlier because they weren’t reading that meter,” said Ammons.
Ammons tells me they weren’t aware the golf course was even using water, and because they’re on the edge of city limits they didn’t think to check, but that’s not the case anymore.
“We’ve capped off that meter and turned it off and they can’t turn it back on now,” said Ammons.
(Information from YourBasin.com)
