Fort Worth takes steps to limit forever chemicals in water as it explores long-term fix

The Fort Worth City Council on Tuesday approved a flurry of resolutions and code revisions designed to bolster the safety and sustainability of the city’s water supply.

City leaders unanimously passed revisions to the city’s water treatment codes in an effort to limit PFAS pollution in public water systems. Council members also adopted updated versions of its 2019 water conservation and drought contingency plans to curb water waste as the region’s surging population strains its natural resources.

The Environmental Protection Agency on April 10 set new national caps on concentrations of six PFAS pollutants in drinking water supplies. At least 49 public water facilities in Texas, including two treatment plants in Fort Worth, exceeded the new maximums. Researchers link sustained overexposure to the chemicals, man-made creations found in non-stick cookware, fast food packaging and firefighting foam, to decreased fertility and increased incidences of cancer, among other conditions.

The city guidance approved Tuesday morning establishes ceilings on PFAS contamination in industrial wastewater fed into the Village Creek Wastewater Treatment Facility, a plant that cleans and redirects 166 million gallons of water daily to 23 communities across the Metroplex.

The city began ramping up surveillance of the pollutants in May 2023, when the Biden administration first proposed the new regulations on the “forever” chemicals (PFAS materials don’t break down on their own). It’s also begun exploring EPA-recommended treatment options, including the use of carbon particles, ion-exchange resin, or high-pressure membranes to filter out the gunk.

“Even though we just have drinking water rules out, we will be looking at the entire water cycle,” Chris Harder, Fort Worth’s water director, told council members after the most recent rule change. “More rules are coming.”

The 2024 Water Conservation Plan, approved moments earlier, detailed a roster of programs and regulations to limit consumption, not just contamination. (The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, a state agency, requires municipalities to update their water planning every five years.)

“In recent years, increasing population and economic development in North Central Texas have led to growing demands for water supplies,” the plan’s introduction reads. “Severe drought conditions in the recent past highlight the importance of the efficient use of our existing supplies to make them last as long as possible.”

The city used around 155 gallons of water per capita each day in 2023, according to the report. The yards, drains, and residents of single-family homes lapped up just over 50% of the city water consumed between 2019 and last year; commercial users accounted for around 34%.

The ends and means outlined in the report differ little from its 2019 variation. By fine-tuning metering, enhancing leak detection, and educating users about wasteful habits, Fort Worth officials hope to trim the city’s per capita water consumption to 150 gallons per day by 2029. (The city’s 2019 conservation plan aspired to reduce daily per capita consumption to 140 gallons by 2024.)

Some Texas water experts describe the city’s goals as overly conservative given the stakes of overuse.

“Based upon the Water Conservation Advisory Council’s 2022 report to the Texas Legislature, the GPCD goals in the City of Fort Worth’s ‘2024 Water Conservation Plan’ are not ambitious,” Todd Votteler, the principal of Collaborative Water Resolution LLC and a frequent adviser to state and local authorities on water issues, told the Star-Telegram over email.

The advisory council urged the state to reduce its average daily per capita consumption to 127 gallons by 2027. The statewide average in 2021, it noted, was 130 (25 fewer gallons than the average Fort Worth intake). Votteler added that other Texas cities of comparable size have set far more aggressive conservation goals; San Antonio’s per capita consumption target for 2029, for instance, is 107 gallons each day.

“While San Antonio and Fort Worth have very different water systems located in fundamentally different regional hydrological characteristics, cities such as San Antonio and El Paso have placed a much greater focus on conservation, allowing them to stretch their existing supplies, while Fort Worth has placed a greater emphasis on the development of new supplies,” Votteler said.

Fort Worth sources its water from the Tarrant Regional Water District, a system fed primarily by a network of lakes and reservoirs. The city’s water department treats and transports the raw water to 1.4 million people in dozens of localities in and around the county.

City leaders Tuesday also formally requested $13.27 million from the Texas Water Development Board to speed up its yearslong effort to identify and replace lead piping. The resolution didn’t specify the rationale for the grant amount or its intended use.