By The Public Communications Office
In this episode of “What’s Up, College Station?” Marketing Coordinator Grace Hallowell and Water Resource Coordinator Jennifer Nations discuss Drinking Water Week, the new Rock Prairie Water Tower, and how College Station works to maintain an ample supply of clean water for residents and visitors.
Transcript
Grace Hallowell:
What’s up College Station? I’m Grace Hallowell, and my guest today is Jennifer Nations, our water resource coordinator, or aka, the water chick.
Jennifer Nations:
Yeah.
Grace Hallowell:
How’s it going?
Jennifer Nations:
It’s going great.
Grace Hallowell:
Yes. We have some fun water things to talk about today, starting with drinking water week.
Jennifer Nations:
Right. Yeah. We get wild and crazy here in the water world, and we celebrate water. For us in the water utility, drinking water week is every week, but there’s one week in May where water utilities and the American Water Works Association try to get people to really focus on where their drinking water comes from and learn about the importance of drinking water utilities to just everyday life.
Grace Hallowell:
Yes, drinking water is important.
Jennifer Nations:
Yeah. And drinking water utilities are really, we don’t think about it, but they are pillars of the community. We have so many sports and recreation and tourism events that come in here, and those people need to have access to water to hydrate while they’re playing. You can do bottled water fine, but bottled water is not going to put out a fire for you. It’s not going to run your sprinkler system. It’s not going to be able to manufacture products, so we have to have clean water for all of that to happen.
Grace Hallowell:
What is the process of clean drinking water for a city?
Jennifer Nations:
So for College Station, and really for all of the water utilities around here, we’re a little bit different from other utilities in the State. We’re entirely groundwater based.
And so what that means is we have ready access to a safe supply of drinking water, not really under our feet right here in College Station, but in Northwest [inaudible 00:01:53] County we have the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer.
It’s about 3000 feet below the land surface. It’s known as an artesian aquifer. So once we drill down into that confining, so there’s a confining layer, so nothing is going to get into it. Right?
Grace Hallowell:
Right. That’s important.
Jennifer Nations:
We can worry about pollutants on the land’s surface or chemicals from manufacturing or something, that’s not going to happen with us because it’s 3000 feet deep. There’s a confining layer. Once we get through that confining layer, the water’s under pressure, so it’s going to shoot up in that Well.
And for us, it comes up to almost 500 feet below the land surface, and then we just pump it the rest of the way. In San Antonio, they have the Edwards aquifer, and that’s another artesian aquifer. And so they have areas there where they just, they drill a hole and the water is just coming up out of the ground automatically.
Grace Hallowell:
Wow.
Jennifer Nations:
Yeah. So we, Bryan and College Station and Texas A&M are all relying on that aquifer. But it’s, once we get it out of the ground, it, because it’s coming from 3000 feet deep, it’s about 118 degrees Fahrenheit, which most people don’t want to have coming out of their sink.
Grace Hallowell:
No.
Jennifer Nations:
So we cool it, and then we add some chlorine for disinfection. And for us, that’s it.
Grace Hallowell:
Pretty simple.
Jennifer Nations:
Yeah, pretty simple. And it’s really incredible to have that resource right there for us, where most people don’t think about their drinking water period, but I think most people also here, don’t understand how blessed we are with that resource.
Grace Hallowell:
Right. You just turn your sink on, fill your cup up, and that’s it. You kind of, you don’t…
Jennifer Nations:
Yeah.
Grace Hallowell:
Think. And we just recently had the new, the Rock Prairie Water Tower.
Jennifer Nations:
Right. That dedicated.
Grace Hallowell:
Yes. So that was a very exciting event to see where the…
Jennifer Nations:
Yeah.
Grace Hallowell:
I don’t know if I’m alone in this, but I didn’t realize that you could go into a water tower.
Jennifer Nations:
Right.
Grace Hallowell:
I thought it was just filled with water, so I learned something new that day.
Jennifer Nations:
That’s good. Yeah. I’m glad that people learned that. We even had people on city staff who commented that they knew that there was the bowl on the top.
Grace Hallowell:
Yes.
Jennifer Nations:
But it didn’t really register with them, that you can just walk in and that water tower is just, the water is just there on that bowl. And it’s really fun. In the drinking water quality report this year, I think I’m going to put some pictures of that event in there just so that people can see what it looks like and…
Grace Hallowell:
Yes.
Jennifer Nations:
To inspect it, there’s a spiral staircase in that water tower. And you climb all the way up and then there’s a walkway across the top, and then you have to get on a ladder and then go all the way up through the bowl of the water tower, an encased area. And people were describing that to me and I said, “No, no, no.”
Grace Hallowell:
No thank you.
Jennifer Nations:
I’m not going to do that. I don’t do heights.
Grace Hallowell:
Yeah. It’s kind of walking up to the top of a lighthouse.
Jennifer Nations:
Yeah.
Grace Hallowell:
But instead of light, it’s water.
Jennifer Nations:
Yeah. But that water pressure, I always forget the math when I’m trying to talk about it, but basically the higher up something is because of gravity, there’s going to be more water pressure. The weight of the water is going to be pushing down. So having that bowl full of water is what allows us to turn on our sprinkler systems in the summer.
And then we can have a water line break and then, oh no, this structure over here is on fire. We can open up the fire hydrant and we still have water pressure to do all that. But if we don’t have the towers full because everybody’s running their sprinkler systems, or if we have too many waterline breaks, then we can lose pressure, so.
Grace Hallowell:
Right.
Jennifer Nations:
Yeah.
Grace Hallowell:
So what else can you tell us about drinking water week or drinking water in general?
Jennifer Nations:
Just drinking water in general, we like to say that it does the four things, it predicts public health, it’s fire protection, it’s economic growth, and just everyday quality of life. It’s those are the four pillars that water utilities provide. And then also, we’re working really around the clock to protect that water quality.
Again, because it’s groundwater coming from a protected source, it’s we’re not going to have a whole lot of stuff in it. But we’re regularly doing testing for about two, I think 225 different possible contaminants that are regulated. And then they’re, every few years there’s something called the unregulated contaminant monitoring rule, the UCMR.
And the Environmental Protection Agency will have us work with a sampling provider, and they’ll have us go out and test for things that we don’t know if they’re in the water or not. There’s no drinking water standards for them yet, but they use that to develop further drinking water standards, so.
And it’s always funny because our water is so protected, but we’ll still test for things like flame retardants or pesticides or I would really hope that there wouldn’t be flame retardants in our water.
Grace Hallowell:
Right.
Jennifer Nations:
But if there was something like that, it would be important for us to find out where it was coming from and develop ways to test for it and then find ways to remove it.
Grace Hallowell:
Yes. Always room for improvement.
Jennifer Nations:
Right. Right.
Grace Hallowell:
Yes. And another thing, going back to the sprinkler systems, that’s another important aspect of water and what you guys do. You…
Jennifer Nations:
Right.
Grace Hallowell:
Can do free checkups for people with…
Jennifer Nations:
We do.
Grace Hallowell:
Irrigation systems. And why is that important to check your system regularly?
Jennifer Nations:
Right. Even if you think you have a good handle on your system, sprinkler components are made up of plastic parts. I had to replace three different sprinkler heads in my yard last year, mainly because there was this little plastic piece that connected the sprinkler head and then the plastic piece, and then the plastic pipe in the ground.
So it’s in the ground, it’s in our soil. It’s getting corroded. The sprinkler is coming on, opening up and closing. It’s little plastic parts that are getting run over by the lawnmower. They’re exposed to the sun. They can crack and dry out so they don’t last forever.
So you want to turn it on, especially in the summertime when you’re running it often at least once a month. Not just when you’re running it, but you go out and look at it and then make sure that you don’t have a cracked head or something that is accidentally spraying the street or something.
Or something that’s just, sometimes sprinklers will come up and nothing, no water comes out because the sprinkler is clogged, so you got to unscrew it and unclog it. But if you have a larger irrigation system on, let’s say a really complicated system with 10 zones or something that might use 8,000 gallons every time it comes on.
Grace Hallowell:
Right.
Jennifer Nations:
Every time. And to put that into perspective, a single my family of five, when we’re not irrigating, we don’t use that much water in a month.
Grace Hallowell:
Right.
Jennifer Nations:
So and sometimes if you’re running it often or too often, then pretty soon you have the equivalent of six months worth of non-irrigation usage, and you use that in one month or three swimming pools worth of usage in one. It would be draining and filling your swimming pool three times in a month.
Grace Hallowell:
Yeah, that’s it. Another thing you don’t really think about when you turn your system on, the water dissipates into the ground or you don’t see how much you’re actually using.
Jennifer Nations:
Right. Right. Yeah. And if it’s running off, or you may not know where it’s coming from because it’s running off of your yard and then your neighbors run off mixes in with it. We had several days, weeks really last year of using 24, 25 million gallons of water a day.
And we’ve never hit that for that long before. And part of it was because this is a great place to live. More people are moving here every day. But also part of it was we had such a hot, dry summer.
Grace Hallowell:
Yes.
Jennifer Nations:
Last year, and people were running their sprinkler systems too often.
Grace Hallowell:
Yes. So there are certain times you shouldn’t run your system. Correct?
Jennifer Nations:
Exactly. The way I like to get people to remember it is sprinklers nicks 10 to six, so between 10:00 AM and 6:00 PM we don’t want any sprinkler irrigation unless you’re testing it or repairing it or something. But we don’t want you to have your sprinklers come on at noon.
Grace Hallowell:
Right.
Jennifer Nations:
And the reason for that is it’ll be windier at that time, and then the evaporation is higher, so most of that water is not getting on your landscape.
Grace Hallowell:
Right. It’s going back into the air.
Jennifer Nations:
Yeah. And we don’t want that. So and that’s kind of the only year round restriction that we have. The other thing that we encourage is water just two days per week. Really now, we only need to water maybe one day a week, and then when we have rain, just keep your sprinkler off.
But in the summer, you really can get by for all but the most extreme dry weeks with just two days per week. A lot of people will water Monday, Wednesday, Friday, whether it needs it or not. Or they’ll water Tuesday, Thursday. Sometimes I see Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday, four days a week. And that’s really too often.
Grace Hallowell:
Yes.
Jennifer Nations:
So another thing, I talked about us testing the water constantly, but if you see a leak in the street, or if you see water bubbling up to the surface, last summer we had a very significant leak in front of the Chick-Fil-A on Fitch.
Grace Hallowell:
I remember that.
Jennifer Nations:
Yeah. It’s right there on the highway. I encourage people to call our dispatch number, look up the utility dispatch number and call that. You can put your request in 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That’s really the best way to report something versus emailing a council member or calling my office number.
Grace Hallowell:
Yes.
Jennifer Nations:
Sometimes I come in on Monday and somebody has left me a frantic message over the weekend, “Oh, this waterline is leaking.” So that’s, we can send somebody out right away.
Grace Hallowell:
You could also message us on Facebook or Twitter.
Jennifer Nations:
Yes.
Grace Hallowell:
And we can send you the number that way.
Miss Jennifer Nations:
Great. That’s…
Grace Hallowell:
Yes. It’s a fast. That’s probably the fastest way. If you don’t call the number directly, is to message us.
Miss Jennifer Nations:
Okay.
Grace Hallowell:
And we will respond and get somebody out there to fix the issues.
Miss Jennifer Nations:
Good. And if this is something that people are, if people like working with their hands, if they like working outside or just knowing that they are part of an unseen public health group, band of superheroes.
Grace Hallowell:
Yes.
Miss Jennifer Nations:
We’ve got some openings that we would love to get filled, and they’re, we’ve had people who start in on the ground level and they move all the way up. There’s licensing available. You really can just like if you can show up and are good with tools and can handle some manual labor, we’ll train you.
Grace Hallowell:
Yes.
Jennifer Nations:
For everything. So…
Grace Hallowell:
Yes.
Jennifer Nations:
We’d love to have more people join the water family and be water nerds like me.
Grace Hallowell:
Yes. I do want to mention too, your little earrings.
Jennifer Nations:
Oh yes. My toilet earrings.
Grace Hallowell:
Your toilet earrings. Those are great. Thank you.
Jennifer Nations:
Even though we’re talking about drinking water week, all of the water that we put in our house is that’s drinking water. So the water that we’re flushing down the toilet, drinking water, the water that’s going down the street, if you’re over watering, that’s drinking water.
Grace Hallowell:
Yes.
Jennifer Nations:
Fighting fires, that’s drinking water.
Grace Hallowell:
Yes. And if anybody has questions about water or where they can find out more information, where can they go to find that information?
Jennifer Nations:
Probably the best place is just CSTX.gov/water. And then from there they can learn about our water quality reports, they can learn about irrigation permits, they can learn about bacteriological testing, all kinds of things.
Grace Hallowell:
Yes. And they could also learn more about water by tuning into your award-winning.
Jennifer Nations:
Yes.
Grace Hallowell:
Waterful Wednesday show.
Miss Jennifer Nations:
Award-winning Waterful Wednesdays.
Grace Hallowell:
On KAMU, it’s on the radio and it’s online.
Jennifer Nations:
Yes.
Grace Hallowell:
That’s a great, I know I’ve learned a lot listening to you.
Jennifer Nations:
Thanks.
Grace Hallowell:
The past few weeks. And yes, award-winning now.
Jennifer Nations:
It won a watermark award for communications at the Texas Water Conference a couple of weeks ago. So that was really, really fun because the people who do that award are people that I’ve known for a number of years. And so to be recognized by my peers for something that I just really enjoyed doing, and that’s really raising awareness in the community about water, that was really satisfying.
Grace Hallowell:
Yes. Well, congratulations.
Jennifer Nations:
Thank you.
Grace Hallowell:
And thank you so much for being here and joining us today.
Jennifer Nations:
Thank you for having me. I’m really excited to get to do this.
Grace Hallowell:
Yeah. And that’s what’s up.
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