The water department gave a presentation Tuesday evening at the Science Spectrum regarding their Strategic Water Supply Plan for the next 100 years.
As the population continues to grow in Lubbock, Aubrey Spear, Director of Water Utilities, said they have multiple projects in place to continue expanding the city’s water supply.
“While we cannot predict the future, what we do have is some planning tools that help us project into the future what our demand might be and what our supplies should look like,” he said.
These projects involve construction of lakes, refilling of aquifers, water reuse, and water conservation.
“Diversification of our water supplies help us mitigate against any deficiencies or shortcomings, not from the city’s standpoint, but just from the climate we live in where we have variability year to year, decade to decade,” said Spear.
According to Spear, the water department has 17 projects they plan to roll out over time. However, he estimated each project costing around 100 million dollars, and their current debt is approximately 400 million dollars. To avoid increasing fees for citizens in the city, Spear said the community needs to continue to conserve water.
“As we conserve more, we can push back these expensive projects so we can pay off the debt on current projects and we won’t have to raise the rates as much,” he said.
Looking ahead, with their plan in place, Spear is confident Lubbock will continue to have enough water for the entire city 100 years from now.
