Man-made wetlands are new water source for Tarrant
By Bill Hanna
billhanna@star-telegram.com
CORSICANA — The water moving through the Trinity River is murky to say the least.
Churning from recent rains, it is a muddy brown.
But that dirty-looking river water about 110 miles southeast of Fort Worth is giving Dallas-Fort Worth a valuable new supply while also providing a key habitat for wildlife.
After beginning with a small 2-acre test facility in the early 1990s, the man-made wetlands have grown to 2,000 acres. The largest phase — 1,600 acres — was completed in October, making this the first year that the wetlands’ full impact has been felt.
Last week, the wetlands were providing about 55 million gallons a day — or about 17 percent of the supply for the Tarrant Regional Water District.
Officially called the George W. Shannon Wetland Water Reuse Project, it pulls water from the Trinity and has it slowly migrate through the wetlands in about a week’s time. Wetland is a generic term for land near streams, rivers, lakes and coastlines where water is naturally trapped. A wetland’s vegetation, soils and micro-organisms filter out pollutants as water passes through.
In these man-made wetlands, the water is first pumped into one of the sediment basins, where much of the sediment drops to the bottom, then goes into wetland cells, which look like ponds or pools that contain vegetation.
“These plants are taking those constituents out of that water and using them for their growth,” said Darrel Andrews, assistant director of the water district’s environmental division. “The soil binds some of those nutrients as well. These act as the filter. That’s what’s removing those nutrients before it gets to the end of the wetland system and it’s pumped into Richland-Chambers Reservoir.”
Texas has seen an increased emphasis on conserving and reusing water. Under the state water plan, reuse projects like the wetlands are expected to grow ninefold over the next 50 years.
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