Operating Experiences at Waco, Texas

Abstract

In the central part of the state Waco is located, a city of 60,000 people in the midst of a rich agricultural district. Cotton is the main crop, but corn, oats, wheat, fruit and a great many other products are also grown in abundance. Big railroad shops, textile mills, furniture and canvas goods manufacturers are the principal industries; Baylor University with fifteen hundred students, the United States Veterans Hospital with one thousand beds are the ranking institutions. With this preface it is perhaps time to arrive at the subject of this paper which has to do with the Waco Water Department. My listeners are not interested in usual routine water works methods, practices, and features and within reasonable limits my remarks will be confined to items that are a little different from those commonly encountered in other municipally owned water plants. Our water supply is obtained from Lake Waco, an artificial lake covering 2,800 acres with a 13 billion gallon capacity in which the run off from a 1,650 square mile watershed is impounded. This lake was built primarily for a water supply storage for the City of Waco, but it has a secondary and important value in flood control which has been happily demonstrated several times. The water is conveyed by gravity to and through the purification and filtration plant five miles away and thence pumped directly into the mains and into a 5 million gallon storage reservoir located at the highest point of the area served. The distribution system consists of about 180 miles of mains, some 700 fire hydrants and nearly 2,000 valves. We have 12,500 customers one hundred percent metered. Our assets are $4,250,000; our bonded indebtedness $2,114,000; our annual revenues about $250,000. The City Charter requires the Water Department to pay into the city general fund an amount equal to the interest on outstanding water works bonds. Our rates are low: 75 cents minimum, which includes the first 2,000 gallons of water, 20 cents per thousand for the next 18,000 gallons, 10 cents per thousand for the