Sugar Land `Turns On` Telfair Pump Station

The new facility avoids using copious amounts of groundwater or potable water by utilizing surface water to fill the Telfair Lakes and irrigate public rights of way.

"This is a tremendously important step in our mandated efforts to reduce groundwater withdrawals and convert to surface water," said Mayor David Wallace during a ceremony to place the new pump into service. "As you know, we are planning and designing facilities for the mandated conversion to surface water. To reduce the costs of that process, the City has been actively identifying and pursuing non-potable water projects like this one, which represent a great cost avoidance compared to equivalent volumes of treated surface water."

The new pump station - that utilizes existing water supplies in Oyster Creek - began with informal discussions between the City and Newland Communities, the developer of the Telfair community. Other partners in the process included Levee Improvement Districts 2 and 17, as well as Fort Bend Water Control and Improvement District 1. The partnership included the following components:

• Sugar Land built the pump station.
• LID 17 in Telfair built the lake-filling infrastructure and non-potable irrigation system to utilize the water.
• LID 2 helped the City acquire the necessary property for the pump station.
• WCID 1 leased the City the water to supply the project, and Newland Communities guided the early development of the initial idea and design for Telfair's system.

Telfair benefits with an inexpensive source of water that matches their need. The City and our surface water conversion partners benefit by receiving Subsidence District credits for early surface water conversion. These credits and the cost avoidance they represent will equal the cost for this project in a very short time and will continue to accumulate after that. The project also represents a wise use of our increasingly valuable water resources.