MIDLAND, Texas — It takes work to get water to West Texas.
Most of our water comes from lakes hundreds of miles away, which costs the city about $2.2 million dollars a month to pump in. And that is just to get it here.
Treating and cleaning the water? That’s a whole other cost.
“The chemicals we always put in there are chlorine and a liquid ammonia which is the disinfectant for the water," Carl Craigo, City of Midland Utilities Director said.
Each year, the city treats 9 billion gallons of water.
Because of all the rain we had at the beginning of summer, the water coming to Midland needs a little more treatment than usual.
“Depending on what’s going on, say like a rain season, when rain is mixing those lakes up we get a lot of manganese in the water so we use potassium permanganate or sodium permanganate so it all clumps together and goes through our treatment cycle," Craigo said.
The chemicals usually cost the city a little under $2 million dollars. But this year with COVID supply chain issues, it’ll cost an extra $300,000 dollars.
“Chlorine has gone up about 1.5 times about what it was a year ago this time and polymer shot up about 3 times," Craigo said. "We expect that to come back down but it’s the same as having problems getting Gatorade at the store right now...manufacturers are raising prices.”
Good news: the extra costs will not be passed onto you.
But you might still have some yellowness to your water here and there as the city treats it.
"Around July or August, sometimes we get a little bit of a yellow tint to the water," Criago said. "That’s magnesium that has gotten into the system as we have started the treatment cycle. It’s harmless, meaning it changes the color of the water but it’s harmless for humans to drink.
In order to get rid of the yellow color, the city adds sodium permanganate and potassium permanganate.
All of the chemicals that are used at the treatment plant are consistently tested by state and federal standards. They are perfectly safe to drink.
Yes—even without an RO system.