People started speculating about what would happen if the area ran out of water completely; but droughts don’t last forever — right?
Desperate times • “Toilet to Tap” • “Drought-stricken Town Turns to Toilets for Water” • “Brushing Teeth with Sewer Water Next Step as Texas Faces Drought”
• “Dry Wichita Falls to Try Drinking ‘Potty Water’” The headlines graced major daily newspapers and
websites all over the country. Al Roker even paid us a visit. (And, by “us,” of course I mean the city of Wichita Falls. Not me personally. I’m quite certain I wasn’t on his list of important people to meet and greet.) Shock value aside, the Water Purifi cation and Reuse
project has done more than sell comedic t-shirts — it’s gotten the area to a place where drinking water is plenti- ful again even though other use remains frivolous. And after all, desperate times call for desperate measures. According to
www.wichitafallstx.gov, it works like this: 1) Treated reuse water is disinfected and pumped to the Cypress Water Treatment Plant;
2) The treated water is again treated through micro- fi ltration (MF);
3) The water is treated again through reverse osmosis (RO);
4) The MFRO-treated reuse water is released into a holding lagoon;
5) The treated reuse water is blended with lake water on a 50/50 basis;
6) The blended water is treated through an 8-step conventional treatment process;
7) The water is stored and pumped to distribution. Now I’ll admit, even to a science-rules-over-emotion
couple like us, there’s an “ick factor” involved. We succumbed and called Sparkletts, one of 2 companies which offer service in Electra, to set up home delivery. And we weren’t the only ones. While other busi-
tscra.org
nesses struggled, those selling bottled water fl our- ished. Lance, our delivery person, says they’re busier than ever before. A couple of times he has even had to delay our delivery because they were sold out of our preferred type or size. That being said, I’m completely comfortable drinking
the recycled water in a restaurant (although I usually order tea simply because I don’t love the taste of the water in its unfl avored state) and believe it had to be done to keep this region from becoming a ghost town. Just as agriculturalists have learned to do more with less, so have the scientists behind our water supply. Although the tank on our land fi nally fi lled to the
three-quarters-full mark following a 3-inch rain last November, this country is a long way from recovery. And in late December, meteorologists proclaimed, “The ‘Great Drought of the 2010s’ will continue, persist and possibly intensify.” But as any optimistic cattleman will tell you, each
day of drought is one day closer to rain. Katrina Huffstutler is a freelance writer and social
media specialist from Electra, Texas. She previously served as associate editor and social media manager for The Cattleman magazine.
May 2015 The Cattleman 69
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100