Many residents in McLendon-Chisholm woke up to no running water on Wednesday, July 13, 2022, because RCH Water Supply was trying to stay within contracted levels with the City of Rockwall. Of course, many received mixed messages from RCH that gave the appearance that it was the City of Rockwall shutting off the water. The City of Rockwall is pumping 2.1 million gallons of water per day to McLendon-Chisholm, which is well over normal usage levels for a single day. The assumption is that due to excessive outdoor watering, residents’ usage levels have exceeded this amount by about 1 million gallons EXTRA per day for the last several weeks. [SEE FIGURE 1]
2022 RCH WATER SUPPLY
WATER CONSUMPTION REPORT
Subscribers Received Minimal Notifications
1st ALERT. RCH Water Supply started issuing orders via text alerts on July 11, 2022 at 11am that RCH is implementing watering schedule implementation for outdoor watering with irrigation or sprinkler systems and to not water between 9am to 5pm.
2nd ALERT. At 9:59am, Tuesday, July 12, 2022 another alert, “No outside watering until further notice due to extremely high use and demand, no outside watering is permitted until further notice.”
Fox News Reporter Lori Brown asked, “Could this happen again this week?”
“Maybe if people don’t get the message how serious the supply issue is.” Dwight Lindop, RCH Water Field Technician
At the Tuesday, July 12, 2022 McLendon-Chisholm City Council meeting, the RCH Board President Jackie Pullen is asking for the customers (3,000 RCH meters) to not use the irrigation systems. Instead, to use your garden hose to water your gardens and/or foundations. Jackie Pullen also mentioned back in April the usage was 578K (April 4, 2022). Mr. Pullen also spent time speaking with our McLendon-Chisholm Fire Chief Jim Simmons regarding pressure issues. They are aware and are being vigilant of our situation. Mr. Pullen also stated that RCH is working on becoming a member of the (NTMWD). However, other member cities in the district would need to vote for them. He believes that this will resolve the supply issues and avoid going through Rockwall.
Are We In Trouble In Not Meeting
Essential Services?
YES. After careful review of the latest RCH Contract that I requested from the City of Rockwall it revealed a number of issues that confirms that our growing rural community of approximately 4,250 and local elected officials should make every effort to do their part to remedy this immediately.
Mayor Keith Short, Mayor Pro Tem Trudy Woessner and our McLendon-Chisholm Fire Chief Jim Simmons have reviewed my concerns and will be doing their part accordingly. I don’t want residents to think that the McLendon-Chisholm City Council are in the dark, but are taking this seriously and have been making efforts on their end as well. Also the Sonoma Verde developers have contracted with trucking in water from another source for construction to deliver the water necessary for the remaining Phase 4C of 43 lots, Phase 3 of 169 lots and Phase 5 of 79 lots.
WHOLESALE WATER PURCHASE AGREEMENT BETWEEN
ROCKWALL AND RCH WATER SERVICE CORP.
*The maximum number of equivalent residential connections shall equal to the lesser of either (i) the maximum daily rate of flow divided by 0.6gpm or (ii) the storage available to RCH within the portion of the distribution served by the delivery point divided by 300 gallons for each connection or equivalent connection within the portion of the distribution system served by the delivery point.
The volumes and rates of supply specifies that it may be subject to reductions if Rockwall has to implement a contingency or water conservation plan which may reduce the amount of water available to RCH or the other customers going through the City of Rockwall. If you look at [Figure 1] you will see on June 8, 2022 we exceeded at 2.934mgd. Many customers were not notified, nor did RCH turn off the valves on customers to restore the low tank levels.
So What Was The Trigger?
City of Rockwall did enact their water ordinance on Tuesday, July 12, 2022. The Rockwall City Council enacted the ordinance in 2019, following years of severe drought in North Texas, as a measure to stave off future supply issues. The ordinance limits outdoor lawn and landscape irrigation to only two days a week. In addition, it strictly prohibits lawn watering during daytime hours between 10am and 6pm.
This explains why RCH was trying to adhere to the contractual obligation of 2.1mgd. However, if you look a bit further into the numbers you clearly see that we have way more meters than originally agreed upon in 2014.
RCH has been increasing the demand by artificially increasing the number of meters. RCH has failed to address their contractual agreement with Rockwall. There has been zero effort to return annually to discuss these increases with the Rockwall City Council. Furthermore, no steps have been taken to find any alternative source or administrative work done to seek to become a NTMWD customer.
The public comments made by Jackie Pullen that RCH has 3,000 meters is substantially more meters than the 2014 amendment in the signed contract. Through additional open records request, I obtained a Summary of Projected Growth and Population [FIGURE 4]. These projections are well over the contracted 1,359 residential connections in the contract, and have been for many years.
Board Governance
In addition, RCH approved service requests when they had NO BUSINESS approving for a new connection which could result in exceeding their Rockwall contracted 1.2 mgd.
The RCH Board is failing to meet basic Texas Open Meetings Act, Chapter 551, Texas Government Code. It’s written in their own RCH Bylaws. Meetings have been cancelled to avoid the public attending, doors have been locked and you can’t send an email to request what you would like to see on the agenda. There is no listing of the board agendas nor are there minutes on the website. If you do wish to receive the agenda and minutes you must call Robin Baley, H20 Services who is the contractor administrator for RCH WS. She will print and send the documents to you through the U.S. Postal Services. Yes, I have had to do this with Ms. Baley. It is absolutely unacceptable that the board of directors is allowing this to take place and it is certainly a lack of transparency.
Who Are The Board Members?
Jackie Pullen, president
Warren Hodges, vice-president
Gary Lovell, director
Lowell English, director
Odis Lowe, secretary
Steve Hatfield, director
Ms. Baley also appears to be managing Forney Lake Water services too. On that website, it lists the names of the board of directors and lists the links of their board agenda meetings in 2021. In similar fashion of using social distancing as a crutch it lists the meetings are held monthly via Zoom.
Steps for RCH Water Service Corp To Improve
New leadership is needed to serve on the board of directors that will make good faith efforts to achieve the administrative changes required by law, governance and the Certificate of Convenience and Necessity (CCN). For now, the CCN may give RCH WS the exclusive right to provide retail water. However, Chapter 13 of the Texas Water Code requires a CCN holder to provide continuous and adequate service to the area within its CCN boundary.
For those interested in volunteering to help turn the RCH WS ship around please consider filling out the Board of Director application*.
*Unless they have updated their bylaws, which is highly unlikely, one of the candidate requirements is a majority of the board of directors shall be engaged in farming.
The next RCH board of directors meeting should take place on Wednesday, August 3, 2022 at 2pm. My hope is to have excellent candidate applications provided to Mr. Pullen by next week. In addition to that I’m hoping for Mr. Pullen to agree to have the following items on the agenda:
• Accept candidate applications.
• Discuss to apply as NTMWD customer, 6 year Engineering Study and all the matters related to show good faith effort.
• Discuss administration and management changes of the day-to-day RCH Operations.
• Discuss and review a process to improve customer communications with regular news, website updates, projects, reports, etc.
• Discuss with the engineer about meeting the requirements that is recommended.
• Discuss and review reports of infrastructure needed to accommodate current meters and growth.
• Discuss and review a calendar of monthly board meetings to post on the website, etc.
• Discuss and review financial reports, outstanding debts, assets, etc.
• Discuss employment positions that will improve customer service, billing, operators, etc.
• Discuss a location improvement to accommodate public attendance of board of director meetings.
RCH board president will need to give direction to Robin Baley to apply the above items for their agenda at their next board meeting. (First Wednesday, August 3, 2022 at 2pm)
Rockwall may agree when the climate conditions return to normal for a little more mgd temporarily, but it won’t cover for the potential growth coming real soon. Rockwall is not going to address the infrastructure problem. And considering how RCH has been out of compliance RCH customers need to express to the Rockwall City Council that we are going to make efforts to hold RCH accountable. We can’t wait around for a government agency to swoop in to save the day.
We Are At AN Extreme Critical Stage for MANDATORY CHANGES
We have amazing people right here in our community and I want to believe that RCH Board of Directors wants to take the steps to make things right. I believe the current board just needs help to improve what they already have. What they have currently is not sustainable and clearly we do not want to experience a supply problem again.
1) Please help by building awareness with your friends and neighbors by sharing this blog post.
2) If you know someone that is an excellent person with management skills and has a great attitude to volunteer to be a candidate please encourage them to fill out the application for Board of Director.
If Mr. Pullen and/or RCH doesn’t show concerted effort to accept new candidates, discuss the above agenda, improve their customer communications, agree to post board agenda/minutes or pursue the process of becoming a NTMWD customer, then one of my goals will be to spend considerable time reaching out to RCH customers to pursue an alternative qualified CCN provider.
10 comments
This is nothing new. These people have been a joke for years. Went through this many times. They over sell the water supply and have been for years.
Remedy: Gather all the voting proxies you can gather up and vote these clowns out. These fools have failed miserably. Where is the storage tank that was supposed to be built at League Road?
When did they last have a Members Meeting? I have lived here 4 years and never gotten a single notice of one! much less a vote!
As mentioned about RCH WS has been out of compliance in what they are required to do with the Texas Open Meetings Act. This will be remedied. However, we need to go through the process “Steps for RCH Water Service Corp To Improve”. That’s Plan A. Help us by finding candidates to volunteer for the board of directors that engage in farming and that is a RCH customer. We need this to be worked on “this week”.
Mrs. Balkum,
I commend your effort to digging up the facts you have provided to support your position on what you believe RCH water has failed to do in regards to servicing its customers. Just as with anything else, you have managed to pick parts of the truth and facts out that support your agenda and at the same time ignored other relevant data and facts that lead to a more informed and overall reason for the issues plaguing RCH.
So starting with your comment about MC containing 4250 citizens and growing. The number of citizens in your community is irrelevant to your argument simply because your community isn’t served by just one water supply corporation. There are 2 WSC that I’m aware of in your community.
Next, concerning the contract for water between the City of Rockwall and RCH WSC, you are only telling half truths that you believe are relevant but when you fully read the contract and comprehend it as a whole you will find RCH has done nothing wrong.
In the contract it states
*The maximum number of equivalent residential connections shall equal to the lesser of either (i) the maximum daily rate of flow divided by 0.6gpm or (ii) the storage available to RCH within the portion of the distribution served by the delivery point divided by 300 gallons for each connection or equivalent connection within the portion of the distribution system served by the delivery point.
The way I understand this information is you stated that Mr. Pullen said there were 3000 connections on RCH WSC. And every day RCH is contracted to receive from Rockwall the amount of 2,100,000 gallons a day. So if you do the math then you will find that RCH is in its contractual limits because mathematically its providing each of its service connections 700 gallons a day which is more than the minimum requirement of 300 gallons for each connection.
700 gallons a day per connection on RCH water system is more than adequate for a household and is within the requirements stated by TCEQ. TCEQ being the organization in the State of Texas that sets forth the requirements and rules for all public water systems in the state.
Also if you refer back to the water consumption usage chart provided in your blog and by RCH, you will observe that the same 3000 connections of RCH use only 500,000 gallons of water in the winter months, give or take, but yet those same 3000 connections use 2,100,000 plus gallons of water during summer months.
So logically the question one might ask itself, is what factors differ in the winter and in the summer in reference to water consumption?
Granted I hold no college education. I am a proud product of the RISD education system but the first thing I thought of was sprinklers. In winter the grass is dormant and requires no irrigation. Then the seasons change to spring and summer and that is when the automatic irrigation systems start to run. Some homeowners are able to program and run their systems themselves. Other homeowners rely on their selected lawn service companies to program and run their systems. Regardless of who programs them, the sprinklers waste a ton of water. That is the simple and obvious truth of the situation when you analyze the year as a whole and you look at the RCH water consumption data as a whole.
IN WINTER, JAN 1 2022, BASED ON RCH WATER CONSUMPTION REPORT, ALL 3000 SERVICE CUSTOMERS DAILY USAGE WAS 545,000 GALLONS. THAT BREAKS DOWN TO 182 GALLONS OF WATER PER CONNECTION!
JUMP AHEAD 5 MONTHS TO JULY 1 2022. THE SAME 3000 SERVICE CUSTOMERS USAGE HAS JUMPED TO 2,596,000 GALLONS PER DAY. BREAK IT DOWN TO 866 GALLONS PER SERVICE CUSTOMER.
So the way I interrupt this is RCH supplies everyone of its customers an adequate supply of water all the time. The manor and conscience decision made by everyone on the system on how to use their daily allotted amount is on them.
Maybe homeowners should turn their frustrations onto the HOAs that make the rules and regulations for their particular subdivisions.
I highly doubt that anyone from an HOA called RCH and said hey we were contemplating the idea of making homeowners sod and upkeep their whole 1 to 5 acre plots and wondered if you all could handle the supply that would be needed for everyone to comply to this rule?
In moments of crisis people want to point fingers and lay blame but no one ever comes together with any conceived solution of ways to pull together and get through it.
Like if having a green yard is your thing, look into ulterior ways of achieving that outcome that aren’t so water consuming. Get artificial turf it requires no watering and stays green all year. Look into having a landscape company paint your yard green.
Invest in drought resistant plants that are indigenous to our part of the state to cut back on watering. Go to HOA meetings and discuss some of the rules that just don’t make sense in this time of drought. We are in an extreme drought level 3 according to the US Drought Monitoring website.
People in the farming and ranching community that are served by RCH and sit on your board are definitely aware of the climate conditions and state of the weather due to the agriculture ties they involve themselves in.
So things happen very quickly with regards to utilities and services in these extreme times. But RCH did issue its first alert on the 11th which is the day before Rockwall implemented its water conservation plan. So on the 12th when Rockwall implemented its plan, naturally RCH had to implement its next stage of conservation to its customers. And all it is asking of people is not to use irrigation systems. Go outside with a hose visit with your neighbor and water by hand. Get a soaker hose for your foundation. Williamson Foundation has an excellent youtube video on how to properly place and use soaker hoses.
But in regards to your concerns regarding open minutes regulations and issues concerning the administrating services provided by the office of Ms. Baley. I do agree and find validity with regards to changes made in order to be compliant and to keep customers more abreast with current affairs and events that effect their system.
And just keep in mind these are my opinions and interpretations of the facts I have read and seen in your articles. I find them very informative and you seem to have a knack for digging into a situation within your community and getting things done. Don’t lose your passion for whatever cause you champion.
So …the math is not as simple as Mr. Justice would like to make it. A household of 6 people is not going to use the same amount of water that a household of two uses. A zero lot line property will not need the same amount of water to protect the foundation / fences and keep landscape alive as a 1.5 acre property. A zero lot line property with 1 to 2 builder trees will not require the same amount of water as a property with 15 or 20 mature trees.
Here are a few facts I have not seen previously mentioned. I am an accountant. I am going to use 1.8 million as my cutoff because the contracted water amount should always have a 15 % margin for unforeseen circumstances. This year is a perfect example. We have had over 65 days of no rain combined with continual temperatures well over 100 degrees. If this were the first time RCH exceeded the 2.1 million gallon per day contract with the City of Rockwall that would be understandable. In fact this issue has existed every year since 2018 and continues to get worse every year from June – September depending on if and when we get rainfall. There is no doubt that in the last 5 years there have been a huge increase of homes added into this water system. RCH has exceeded the 1.8 million gallons per day (15% margin) 39 days in 2018, 45 days in 2019, 60 days in 2020, 36 days in 2021 and 53 days thru 7/31 2022.
For those of you who don’t feel it is reasonable to consider a safety margin the actual number of days that RCH use exceeded 2.1 million are as follows: 17 days in 2018, 9 days in 2019, 34 days in 2020, 3 days in 2021 (higher than average rainfall) and 24 days before RCH enacted the no outdoor watering policy mid July.
It also makes sense to look at non summer months to evaluate the actual growth of water consumption on the system. February 2015 water consumption was 10.1 million gallons per day in 2018 it was 11.7 million gallons per day and in 2022 it was 15.9 million gallons. I am sure we can all agree that no one is outdoor watering in February. Clearly the base consumption has grown exponentially as the number of homes on this system has increased.
For those who still remain skeptical January 2018 was 16 million gallons – January 2022 was 18.6 million gallons. March 2018 was 16.7 million gallons – March 2022 was 19.7 million gallons. April 2018 was 21.4 million gallon – April 2022 was 26.1 million gallons. The question then becomes why has RCH not been addressing the issue with their yearly contract shortfalls when they are adding consumers at an alarming rate?
My point is that outdoor water is one piece of a very complex puzzle that includes population consumption, rainfall, weather, cloud cover. Unless we are in an extreme drought homeowners should not be faced with losing structural integrity of their foundations, trees, lawns, fences and plants due to the incompetence of a board of directors. We are not in an extreme drought from a watering prospective. Yes … lake levels are down but local communities are just beginning to enforce minimal watering restrictions. None are in stage 5 restrictions. We have repeatedly exceed 2.1 million gallons per day many days over the last 5 years during the summer months and we have a substantial increase in consumption with additional homes being added to the system. Why would anyone think that a contractual volume of 2.1 million gallons per day is reasonable or prudent. The leadership of RCH clearly lacks the ability to provide its customers with adequate water.
The growth projection chart included above will set contract volumes that leave us under contracted for summer months while allowing for continued growth at the same time. It would be interesting to analyze when developments were added to the system to see what their impact on water usage was so a more accurate determination could be made on future estimates rather than simply using 1 house = X gallons.
Thank you Sandy Behrendt for reading and sharing some very good points.