WICHITA FALLS (KFDX/KJTL) — The experimental hydrogen power plant is anticipated to go where the old coal plant is located, with this, the city would be selling 20,000 acre-feet of water per year. That totals around 6.5 billion gallons of water.
“So now that this contract has been negotiated, it’s ready to go to the city council for approval,” said Carol Murray, mayoral candidate. “The issue is the citizens don’t know anything about this, and word has just gotten out in the past few days. The citizens really need to understand more.”

Of course, raw water is not a type of water that one can drink, but raw water can be filtered to create cooling water, purified water, and drinking water.

Wichita County is in a stage one drought. The surrounding counties are in at least a stage one drought as well.

Water levels for surrounding lakes are low. Why push to sell water while Texoma is in a drought?

Mayoral candidates Tim Short and Murray both agree this deal should not be rushed.
“This is something that’s so important to our community that really my suggestion would have been for them to have a town hall go through a presentation and help the citizens understand why we want to sell our water when we’re not required to do so,” said Murray.
“They’re proposing renegotiating a contract, there is no urgency to do that,” said Short. “This contract, the existing contract, is in place for another 15 years.”

Both candidates posted about the proposed plan on their respective Mayoral Facebook accounts. The public appeared puzzled and against the city selling water.

As Short put it, this does not seem like the time for Wichita Falls to be negotiating water usage.

“This is not a lake where we get our drinking water out of where we are right now, but it’s just a good representation,” said Short. “If four lakes are at 60%, it just doesn’t seem like a prudent thing to do to be renegotiating any deals that concern the water.”