Tarrant Regional Water District and City of Dallas Water Utility representatives attended the Cedar Creek Lake Area Chamber of Commerce luncheon May 12 to promote the Integrated Pipeline Project.

TRWD Reservoir Manager Buckley Butler, who oversees Cedar Creek Lake, told the chamber the project would help guarantee future water needs for residents and businesses served by the two utilities and provide an economic boost by creating jobs. He emphasized the importance of making details of the project known to area communities.

“We want to have good open communication,” Butler said. “It is an extremely important project for all of North Texas.”

Butler said the $2.3 billion project being undertaken in a cooperative agreement between TRWD and City of Dallas Water Utilities would pump water out of Lake Palestine to Dallas through a new 108-inch pipeline. Water going to Dallas, which owns water rights in Lake Palestine, would be pumped through a subsidiary pipeline and never enter the Cedar Creek Lake system, he said.

TRWD does not own water rights in Lake Palestine so it will not be gaining another water source, Butler said. Wetlands in Cedar Creek Lake and Richland Chambers Reservoirs will be employed to increase water supplies for TRWD, he said.

Butler, who is a lifetime resident of Cedar Creek Lake, said water from Lake Palestine would not be pumped into Cedar Creek Lake in an effort to raise its level for boating as is mistakenly understood by some residents of the lake. TRWD’s use of the new pipeline would be to provide water needs for the utility’s ever-growing customer base, he said.

The cooperative effort on the pipeline will save hundreds of millions of dollars in constructions costs because the two utilities can share the cost rather than each building a new pipeline, Butler said. Those savings will be passed on to the utilities’ customers, he said.

Project coordinators estimate that another $1 billion dollars in energy costs will be saved in coming decades as a result of the coordinated effort.

Butler said residents of Henderson County should expect to see construction on the pipeline in the area of the Trinity River near Highway 31.

Butler said utility officials believe that if Henderson County residents are informed of all the aspects of the Integrated Pipeline Project they will understand its benefit to North Texas. “As long as people know what is going on, they typically are pretty happy,” he said.

Visit TRWD’s website to view a video on the project. It can be found at http://www.trwd.com/articles/article/better-understanding-the-ipl