Inside Look stories give Star-Telegram subscribers exclusive sneak peeks and behind-the-scenes reporting. Story suggestion? Editors@star-telegram.com.
Residents of a gated community about a half an hour northwest of downtown Fort Worth feel they got less than they bargained for when they bought their homes. Their most ardent complaint: there’s not enough water.
Amanda Jones and her family spent last week splashing in the pool instead of taking showers due to a boil water notice. It was lifted on Saturday morning, but she and other residents of The Resort on Eagle Mountain Lake , off Morris Dido Newark Road in unincorporated Tarrant County, are now on mandatory Stage 1 water restrictions because of continued low levels.
Jones, who has lived in The Resort since 2009, pointed out that the fire hydrants in the neighborhood are painted black to alert firefighters that there is not enough water in the system to connect hoses to them in the event of a fire.
Neighbor Frank Romeo complained of high water bills and poor service. He compared his bill to that of his son, who lives in Fort Worth, showing that he pays three times what his son does in the city.
“It’s a rip off, and I will say it’s overpriced,” said Romeo, who has lived in The Resort since 2004. “But beyond the price, the service is atrocious. The water quality is awful. We have outages frequently. We have boil your water deals frequently.”
He, Jones and others said they have around three boil water notices a year due to insufficient water in the system. They blamed these and a litany of other water issues on the private water company Aqua , which supplies water to the subdivision.
Romeo, a professional engineer, said the problems could be fixed by either installing a water tower or a redundant pump system, one in which a second water pump takes over when one fails. All residents said they have demanded better service and maintenance of Aqua’s system for years.
The company pointed to factors like water scarcity in the region and residents’ watering practices as causes. Representatives for Aqua initially blamed last week’s boil water notice on an equipment malfunction at the neighborhood plant, but the notice residents received on July 10 stated that the issue arose from “excessive landscape watering.”
The Resort is on the shores of Eagle Mountain Lake, but Aqua gets water for the subdivision from the Trinity Aquifer below, according to data from the Texas Water Development Board .
The residents “pull the water down so low that the aquifer has to rebuild itself,” according to Rich McCorkle, an Aqua field supervisor.
He has witnessed over a dozen houses at a time watering in the heat of the afternoon in June, he said.
“If we don’t water smart, if we don’t conserve this resource responsibly, then this is the kind of issue that we could run into,” he said.
An Aqua spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the average resident at The Resort uses around 9,000 gallons per month and that some households have been recorded using over 200,000 gallons a month. The spokesperson did not provide documentation to corroborate such high usage.
The average Texas household uses just over 5,600 gallons of water a month, according to the Texas Municipal League, which conducts an annual water and wastewater survey of hundreds of cities across the state.
“Stage 1 water conservation measures were implemented in The Resort at Eagle Mountain Lake community to protect the drinking water supply as a result of high demand for outdoor water use,” the Aqua spokesperson said. “In addition to serving our customers, one of our main priorities is protecting potable water sources. Water is a finite resource and to ensure future availability, we must all work together.”
Residents weren’t buying it. Romeo and others expressed dismay at Aqua’s inability to provide enough water for the subdivision, considering it is not filled to capacity. Development on The Resort began in 1999, and dozens of lots remain empty.
A map of lots on the website of home builder Our Country Homes shows that 65 lots are listed as Available, Hold or Future Spec. Another 68 lots are listed as Sold, but several of those have been built, according to satellite imaging by Google Maps.
The residents said that neighborhood covenants prohibit zeroscaping, which includes using dirt or gravel instead of grass, and astroturf, and that they are required to keep their lawns green.
They also pointed out that Aqua has also overused water. Last year, the company was fined almost half a million dollars for pumping nearly double its permitted limit in Hays County, leading to the popular swimming hole Jacobs Well running dry for months.
Folks at The Resort are not alone in their water troubles. Water has become a hot commodity in recent years, as North Texas has experienced rapid growth and worsening drought.
The Resort sits atop the Trinity Aquifer, which is one of the most used groundwater resources in Texas and has suffered some of the biggest declines in the state, according to the Texas Water Development Board. Municipal pumping is the biggest contributor to this decline, especially along the Interstate 35 corridor from McLennan to Grayson Counties.
A Water Development Board study of Texas aquifers published in 2016 showed that water levels in the Trinity Aquifer around Dallas and Tarrant Counties rose from 1995 to 2010, but then declined again in the following five years.
“This is not an isolated issue that these communities are facing, nor will it be an isolated issue for communities in Texas as we move forward into the future,” said Kyle Garmany, water and agriculture program director for The Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit organization that works to protect land and water in Texas and across the globe.
Groundwater decline in the Metroplex has been greater than anywhere else in the state, he said.
Tarrant County is not experiencing a drought, but conditions are abnormally dry, according to federal data on drought information found on the North Texas Groundwater Conservation District website.
Just across Eagle Mountain Lake from The Resort, residents in Azle have been under Stage 1 water restrictions since July 3.
There is a lot of summer left, and if previous years are any indication, the region could only be beginning to see summer water scarcity issues.
The Wise County city of Rhome saw water restrictions from June to September of last year. And Azle saw critically low water levels in October as well.
In July 2022, excessive water use and low rainfall led to Stage 5 restrictions and boil water notices in Reno in Parker County.
Broader regional water access problems are little consolation for Romeo and other residents at The Resort who question how Aqua plans to provide water as the neighborhood fills out.
“You’re 20% under the total maximum utilization, and yet you run out of water,” he said. “What happens when you fill up the other 20% of the lots?”
Most Popular
Comments / 0