Author: /u/Egxjuggernaut

Has anyone been to this before? I got offered some free tickets and can’t really tell what it is by the promotional material.

Is this just Houston’s Burning Man Lite?

I’ve seen posts over the past few weeks talking about the taste of the water in the city and I wanted to clear a few things up and give a basic outline on how Houston’s water systems work.

City of Houston:

85% of the drinking water in COH comes from surface water sources, like Lake Conroe, Houston, and the Trinity River. This water is sent to one of the 3 surface water production facilities around the city where the water is strained, filtered, coagulated, then treated with chemicals like chlorine+ammonia (chloramines), chlorine dioxide, Ozone, and some other fun chemicals.

Typically elemental chlorine (gas) or liquid sodium hypochlorite are used to disinfect ground water, but when you have surface water you have to use chloramines due to the organic matter in surface water (think fish germs, plants, and algae). When chlorine comes into contact with those biological materials it creates disinfection byproducts (DBP), which are hazardous over prolonged consumption. When chlorine is used in conjunction with ammonia it will create Monochloramines, which do not produce disinfection byproducts. There is a balancing act that has to take place known as breakpoint chlorination, if you underfeed you don’t create a strong enough disinfectant, but if you overfeed then you get di & tri chloramines. These compounds can react negatively with the organic compounds in the water. Over time the transmission lines will develop a film of nitrogen or algae and will need to essentially be shocked. The common term is a “free burn” where the water lines and plants are super chlorinated in order to scour the lines. While there may be a temporary change in taste or smell, there are no associated health risks with a short term switch to chlorine disinfection.

Once the water leaves the surface water production facilities, it is sent out to smaller booster stations around town, and from there to MUDs. At each stop the incoming water is tested with either online analyzers, or daily hand tests. Depending on the chloramine residual in the incoming surface water these booster stations are designed to automatically adjust the chemical dosage based on water chemistry and flow rate. This water is then analyzed again once it leaves the plant and goes into residential systems. It is then tested again at the end of the loop, usually from a fire hydrant, or sample line. If at any point unsafe drops in disinfection residual is found the operators of these plants will either make an adjustment to the dosing of the disinfection chemicals, drain the line of stagnant water, or enact a free burn if ammonia buildup is detected.

MUDs:

Municipal Utility Districts for the most part are not incorporated into the City of Houston and are in charge of water, sewer, and other infrastructure. These are normally found in the suburbs or outlying areas in Houston and operated by a third party operations company, or in very rare occasions, by the MUD district themselves.

If your MUD is not on interconnect with the COH or another MUD that is using chloramines, these water plants are ground water facilities, which will only feed chlorine since there shouldn’t be any bilogical demand from the source water, so there is no worry about DBP’s.

If your MUD district is on interconnect with the COH, or another MUD district that uses chloramines these plants will use chloramines for disinfection.

All plants that use surface water have backup wells in case the COH is facing a drought or some other issue feeding water. These wells are regularly exercised and are used primarily as backup.

Whenever one of these ground water plants goes through a chloramine conversion your water will taste and smell like cat piss, but only until the chemical levels are balanced out (usually no more than a month).

Source water quality:

Like I said before we get the majority of our water from surface water sources. We are blessed (/s) with extremely hard water, due to a large amount of calcium and manganese in our water. This is where water spots, and other issues come from.

Some of the aquafers can have methane, sulfur, or arsenic in the water which have their own treatment/removal strategies.

Conclusion:

The city of Houston and the surrounding cities do not have all the same water source, and each differs on the source water quality, treatment, and transmission. If you are curious about your water I recommend looking at your water bill and seeing who you pay, and where your water comes from. Some MUD’s and cities have some good writeups and information pages on source water, treatment, and FAQ’s.

Notes/fun facts:

Due to our overreliance on ground water, Houston has subsided 1ft (~10ft in some areas) due to aquifer depletion. This was one of the main drivers to convert the city to Surface Water.

Sugarland pulls water of the Brazos river, and they hit their water with flocculation, membrane filters, activated carbon filters, chloramines, sodium hydroxide, fluoride. They won best tasting water in the state, and were runner up for best in NA in 2019. Also they are having a scheduled free burn on March 1st.

Pearland currently gets it’s water from the Chico and Evangelist aquifers, and COH surface water. They are building their own surface water treatment plant so they no longer have to rely on the COH.

Conroe and parts of the Woodlands are fed by the SJRA surface water treatment plant up by Lake Conroe.

Surface water is being brought out to the MUD’s in Harris and FB counties, there is a good explanation video on this page under “what to expect from construction“

Remember when half the city lost water pressure the first day of the rodeo cookoff two years ago? That is because one of the 100 in+ transmission lines was hit by a backhoe. That’s the amount of water that was being sent by these production facilities.

I won’t be able to answer any questions about PFAS or chromium in the ground water since it isn’t my area off expertise.

If the taste and odor of your tap water are too strong, and you have the money, install a full house filter or RO machine (don’t ask me for recommendations, I have never dealt with these).

Chloramines kill fish, so use bottled water.

Chloraminated water cannot be used for dialysis.

Don’t use tap water for a neti pot.

If your water is brown it could be a number of things, pressure change in the distribution system, high levels of total dissolved solids, rust in your pipes, if the a fire hydrant was recently used. I really don’t have a good suggestion since it can be any number of issues.

Personally, I drink COH tap water that goes through either a fridge filter or a Elkay EZH2O.