HUFFMAN The Texas Water Development Board approved a plan to bring raw water from the Trinity River to Luce Bayou on July 23.
The Luce Bayou Interbasin Transfer is a 23 mile canal that will cost $2.7 Billion to expand the Northeast Water Purification Plant. The plant that supplies water from Lake Houston to parts of Harris County and the City of Houston.
When voters approved a plan in 2013 to use $2 billion from oil and gas royalties to finance water projects the Texas Legislature created the State Water Implementation Fund Texas (SWIFT.) SWIFT is an ongoing plan to provide financial assistance for projects to state water plans. It is a cooperative effort between the state and counties.
A state water plan since 2001 to supply enough surface water to residents in Harris County was to pipe in water from the Trinity. The plan was to address two major obsticals to providing enough water. One problem is that Harris County has expanded to 4.4 million population, an increase of over 1/3 of a million since 2010. The other problem is subsidence, water taken from local aquifers amounted to 192 million gallons per day and as a result some of the land in Harris and Galveston Counties is sinking.
The plan would put the capacity for the Northeast Water Purification Plant that currently handles 100,000 gallons per day to 400,000 gallons per day.
Ground water would come at a premium at current usage.