The process of bringing groundwater to the Greenbelt Water Authority system is getting closer to reality this week as contractors began the process of laying pipe from Clarendon to the authority’s filter plant.
Greenbelt General Manager Bobbie Kidd said Monday that the five wells in north Clarendon have all been tied together, and workers were busy laying the main line on North Sully Street that will carry the city’s groundwater to the plant.
Most of the work on the wells has been completed, and the groundwater district is on board with the plan, Kidd said.
It has taken several months to bring the old wells back online since the city stopped using them in 1968, after relying on them for decades. At least one well is documented to have been dug in 1887, the same year Clarendon moved to its present location.
As part of the modern project, the wells were re-drilled and cased and tied together. Kidd said he expects to be pumping in three weeks or a month, and the groundwater will be blended with surface water from Lake Greenbelt in an effort to ease pressure on the reservoir, which has been hard hit by the ongoing drought and two summers of intense heat.
“It’s still only supplemental water,” Kidd said, noting that Greenbelt has plans to develop four additional wells on its property on Kelly Creek.
“We’ll have a public hearing about that in May at the groundwater district,” he said.
Greenbelt remains on the state’s “six-month watch list” where it has been since last summer, Kidd said, and the water authority is moving forward with plans to secure additional water rights for the future.
A $10 million application has been made to the Texas Water Development Board’s Revolving Fund to develop a project to bring water from the north, but Kidd said the authority won’t know the success of that application until late July of this year. In the meantime, Greenbelt is pursuing other funding sources for that project.
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