Water bills pay for much #MoreThanWater

Water rates pay for #MoreThanWater

Maria Cantu is a chemist and biologist who measures the quality of water samples in the District’s wet lab. Maria and her teammates in the NTMWD laboratory test around 685 samples per day (250,000 annually) to make sure your drinking water meets or exceeds regulatory, health and aesthetic standards set by state and federal agencies.

Maria is only one of over 750 people who work behind-the-scenes every day cleaning pipes and pumps, running lab tests, and regulating water flow so we can distribute safe drinking water to more than 1.6 million people in North Texas. This is part of what your water rates pay for; it’s much #MoreThanWater.

Did you know that only 15% of your water rate cost actually pays for the amount of water you consume? The remaining 85% supports the people behind the scenes like laboratory and environmental technicians, water operators, mechanics, engineers, and many more. It also supports the reservoirs, treatment centers, laboratories and hundreds of miles of pipe they build, run and maintain. These employee’s hard work, innovation, and careful project timing enable us to continue providing wholesale water to one of the nation’s fastest growing areas for only about one-quarter penny per gallon.

District representatives have been meeting with city councils and officials to help explain why costs are going up here and across the nation. These presentations are available here. Check out this video from the Alliance for Water Efficiency and learn more about why rates are increasing.

NTMWD-Value of Water – Fact sheet-062717