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Ready to unpack the powerful stories of a Texas titan - the Brazos River? Listen as experts explain the Brazos River Basin's immense role in our daily lives. They'll cover everything from the river's fascinating history to all the work that goes into ensuring you have water when you turn on your faucet.
Hear invaluable insights on topics like why lake levels change, the important projects safeguarding our water, the many species that call the Brazos home, and even some tips for enjoying the water from Brazos River Authority experts.
This is your chance to understand the immense work that goes into developing, managing, and protecting the Brazos River Basin, which stretches from the Texas-New Mexico border to the Gulf. (The basin is the size of Tennessee, y’all, it’s big.)
It’s a huge part of our state’s story and we can’t wait to share it with you.
Got questions about the Brazos. No more unknowns. Ever wonder where that water comes from or where it goes? We're Unpacking the Brazos River.
Charlie Shugart:Welcome to the BRA's podcast, Unpacking the Brazos River. I'm Charlie Shugart, and I'm with our public information office. Part of my job involves chatting on the phone with people all across the Brazos River Basin, and it's always an adventure with the sheer range of questions I field. What I often bump into though is it's clear some people out there are still a little fuzzy on exactly what it is we do. So today, we're going to decode the drop, so to speak.
Charlie Shugart:So joining me today is Matt Phillips, the Brazos River Authority's deputy general manager and all around all star. Thanks for joining me today, Matt.
Matt Phillips:Thank you for having me.
Charlie Shugart:So this is the first time our listeners are meeting you. So tell us a little bit about your history with the BRA.
Matt Phillips:I've been with the Brazos River Authority for about fifteen years, most recently. Another stint before that for about five years. I was recently promoted to deputy general manager in 2024.
Charlie Shugart:Congratulations.
Matt Phillips:Thank you. And before that, I was BRA's legislative and governmental affairs manager, which I did for all the rest of my time here. So that involves all of our interactions with the legislature and the federal government and policy and all those things. So I have a long history with BRA. In fact, I've worked for BRA as a part time maintenance worker when I was in high school at our Lake Limestone location.
Charlie Shugart:That's amazing.
Matt Phillips:BRA has been part of my life for most of my life, so it's a great place to work, I've always enjoyed being here and what we do.
Charlie Shugart:Alright. Well, thank you for joining us. So let's dive in a little bit. Who created the Brazos River Authority, and why did they do it?
Matt Phillips:So the Brazos River Authority was created by the Texas legislature through the passage of what at that time was called old session laws, which since been codified into the statute. But back then, it was it was old session laws. And, you know, I think initially, the BRA was created because there was massive flooding along the Brazos. In the upper and central, there was just a a ton of devastating flooding, particularly in around the city of Waco. I know that there was a lot around then too.
Matt Phillips:And so I think they were created to try to deal with that. And over time, our mission changed a little bit from that to more water supply. The federal government through the US Army Corps of Engineers took over the flood control aspect in our basin. They manage flood control in our basin, whereas the BRA switched more to water supply. And that's led us more to the mission that we have now, which is to provide raw water and develop water and protect the water that we have in our reservoirs and in the Brazos River and its tributaries.
Charlie Shugart:Speak a little bit more about what it means to develop, manage, and protect the water resources.
Matt Phillips:It's funny. Over time, those words change just as culture and society changes. You know, at one point, oddly enough, the word conservation meant building a reservoir. It meant building a dam and holding back water during times of plenty and then using it during times of drought. Obviously, now conservation has a completely different thing.
Matt Phillips:But I think the same thing kinda happens with our mission is that over time as things change, it almost morphs. You know, it uses the same words, but what those words mean can kinda change a little bit. I think develop for us in terms of where we are today in time and space means the development of new water supplies. You know, we've got tremendous growth in our basin and our entire state. And our current supplies are only gonna take us so far.
Matt Phillips:So we're to the point where we've gotta look to the development of new supplies and that can take a number of different forms whether that's new reservoirs like the one that we're working on Allen's Creek or whether that's aquifer storage recovery or eventually maybe desalination along the coast. So that to me is the developed part. Manage is really kind of what our water services guys and our guys at the reservoirs do every day, and that's managing those supplies, the ones we have in our reservoirs, you know, making releases, working on our infrastructure and our dams, and making sure that they can continue to function and hold back water and do the things that they need to do, working in our water treatment plan in East Williamson County and making sure that it continues to function and expanding it. So that to me is the management part. It's those supplies that we currently have on the ground today doing what we need to do to maintain those and make sure that they're still there.
Charlie Shugart:A lot of different aspects to it.
Matt Phillips:Yeah. A ton of different aspects to that. And then to me, you know, the protect part really gets into the environmental stewardship that we do and the environmental monitoring and making sure that we don't have impairments throughout our basin. I mean, really, we say it all the time. The cheapest, most accessible water supply you have is the one that you already have.
Matt Phillips:Obviously, we're always working to develop new supplies, but we can't let anything from the standpoint of development or discharges or just environmental hazards cause a problem with the current supplies that we have because we obviously already need more. The last thing we need is to have what we're currently counting on become a problem from an environmental standpoint.
Charlie Shugart:You mentioned earlier raw water, and I don't think that's a term that maybe your day to day people are familiar with. What do you mean when you say raw water?
Matt Phillips:It's untreated. So it doesn't go through a treatment plan. It hasn't been, you know, treated to TCEQ drinking water standards. So it's not what you're gonna see coming out of your tap. It is raw lake water, raw river water.
Matt Phillips:It is what you see when you look at a lake or a river. Zooming out a little bit, we have a system of 11 reservoirs that we call our water supply system. Eight of them are owned and operated by the US Army Corps of Engineers. So those are owned by the federal government. It's their staff there at the dams.
Matt Phillips:They're the one that make the releases. Three of them are owned and operated by the Brazos River Authority and were built and constructed by us, and those are Possum Kingdom, Lake Limestone, and Lake Granbury. The difference between our reservoirs and Corps reservoirs is really that flood control aspect. Brazos River Authority reservoirs are purely for water supply, meaning when mother nature allows, we will keep them as full as we possibly can, but that's as full as they get. And once we start getting flood events, we have to pass in water that's coming out.
Matt Phillips:Whereas you contrast that with the Corps of Engineer reservoirs like the other eight that are in our system, and those have massive amounts of empty space or room at the top of them where they can catch additional water beyond their full pool in order to protect areas downstream.
Charlie Shugart:Is there a reason why we can't just make ours flood control reservoirs now?
Matt Phillips:It would be next to impossible. You would not only have to somehow acquire all of the property around it, almost all of which is privately owned at our reservoirs, but you would also then have to restructure the dams themselves in order to be able to hold additional water. And so from that standpoint, it would be massively cost prohibitive. Additionally, you know, our system is designed in such a way, particularly on the main stem of the Brazos, that while Possum Kingdom has to pass inflows and Granbury has to pass inflows, downstream of that, we have Lake Whitney. And Lake Whitney has a massive flood pool.
Matt Phillips:Its flood pool is probably large enough to hold two Possum Kingdoms and two Granburys.
Charlie Shugart:Oh, that's huge. Just the flood pool, not the whole lake.
Matt Phillips:Just the flood pool, not the whole lake. And so it is meant to be able to catch those flows that we're sending down from PK and Granbury during flood events.
Charlie Shugart:So you talked a little bit about how we work to provide water. What does that look like? How exactly is it that we do that?
Matt Phillips:So we have about a 150 long term contracts totaling about 700,000 acre feet and I can we can talk about acre feet and kinda what that means because that's not usually a common term. It's a big old chunk of water . But we provide water to our customers on a long term basis, usually thirty years via our contracts. In terms of how our customers take water, there's a couple of different ways they do it. We have some customers that take water directly from a lake, so directly from a reservoir.
Matt Phillips:They have an intake station or a pump that pulls water out and then it it diverts it into their treatment systems where they treat it and then distribute it through whichever way they want to. We also have customers that take water from the river itself. So they will have an intake structure on the river and they take water from the river as it's flowing by. The difference between the two is for the customers that take water from the river, depending on flow levels, they typically can require us to release water from upstream reservoirs in order for them to be able to have the right flow to take water.
Charlie Shugart:So if somebody is in the lower part of the basin and they need access to more water, they'll call us and be like, hey. Open the gates.
Matt Phillips:It depends on the conditions because typically, if we're in normal to wet conditions, there's enough river flow for them to be able to take water as they need to. But it's when we get into dry conditions that we have to start using the reservoirs for the purpose that they were built, which is they caught all that water when it was wet. Now it's dry. Folks need to be able to take water. So in that case, yes, they would reach out to us.
Matt Phillips:We would begin releases from our reservoirs. Particularly for the lowest downstream customers, the way that we do our releases is we start at our lowest available reservoir and then we stair step up. Because you always wanna keep as much water as you possibly can from a water supply standpoint in your furthest upstream reservoir
Charlie Shugart:Why is that?
Matt Phillips:which for us is Possum Kingdom. Because it from a hydrological standpoint, it has less chance of catching as much rain as the other ones and it's kind of the linchpin of your entire reservoir system. It's one of the largest ones in our system for us to be able to make water available to customers. So you never wanna start with that one and then, you know, be using the lower ones later. And there's also a timing aspect because the lower reservoirs can get water to those customers faster because they're closer to them.
Matt Phillips:So we typically start at the lower reservoirs and then stair step our way up because we wanna keep as much water in our upstream reservoirs particularly because we don't know when the drought's gonna end.
Charlie Shugart:Right.
Matt Phillips:So we don't know how long we're gonna need to be making releases.
Charlie Shugart:Yeah. Absolutely. So you mentioned that we have reservoirs within the BRA's system of reservoirs that are owned by us and owned by the Corps of Engineers. All the water within the Corps' lakes, is that part of our water supply system?
Matt Phillips:It is. I mean, backing up a little bit. So in order to to be able to utilize water and surface water in Texas, which is a distinction between surface water and groundwater, and that's maybe a time for another subject for another podcast. To be able to utilize surface water in the state of Texas, you have to have what's called a water right from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
Matt Phillips:And so the Brazos River Authority has been granted water rights by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. And part of those rights involve storage, and we store a large amount of our water rights, I forget what the exact percentage is, in Corps of Engineer or in the eight Corps of Engineer reservoirs that are in our system. Now we have agreements with the Corps of Engineers to store our water there, and we also compensate the Corps of Engineers for storing our water there. A number varies, and it's a different number each year, but it's to help pay for the operations and maintenance of those facilities because they're allowing us to store water in there.
Charlie Shugart:Does that mean we don't just own all the water in the Brazos River Basin?
Matt Phillips:We do not. We we do not and we also don't hold all the water rights in the Brazos Basin. Now we do hold a majority, if not most of the storage in the Brazos Basin just because of the 11 reservoirs that are in our system. But there are other cities and industries and electric producers and agriculture users that have their own water rights separate and apart from us.
Charlie Shugart:I know a lot of people, because we have our central office located here in Waco, think that we own and operate Lake Waco as well, but this would be a good example of a different water right.
Matt Phillips:Correct. The city of Waco holds the water rights in Lake Waco, and the Corps of Engineers owns and operates that reservoir. So we do not consider in any way Lake Waco to be part of our water supply system.
Matt Phillips:It doesn't show up on any of our graphics that show our water supply system because it is completely solely controlled by the city of Waco.
Charlie Shugart:So lakes aren't the only thing that we own and operate, and in ways that we handle water.
Matt Phillips:We own and operate one water treatment facility, and it's located next to Lake Granger near the city of Taylor. And then we call it our East Williamson County Regional Water Treatment System. And it provides treated water, so that's different than raw water. It's water that's been treated to drinking water standards to the cities of Taylor, Jonas Special Utility District, and Lone Star Regional Water Authority. Those are our three main customers out of that plant.
Matt Phillips:You know, the interesting thing about that facility is it is in an unbelievably high growth area of our basin, which we have several high growth areas, but it's probably one of the highest growth areas of our basin. And so what started out as a little bitty old water plant is gonna have to be expanded immensely over the course of the next twenty to thirty years in order to keep up with demand and allow us to be able to deliver additional treated water. I think that right now, we're able to produce somewhere around 17,000,000 gallons a day out of the East Williamson County facility. We are in the process of expansion that I believe will take us to 27,000,000 gallons a day. And then projections tell us we're gonna need to get to 40,000,000 gallons a day by the year 2040 which seems far off, but in water years, it's really not.
Matt Phillips:We'll be there before you know it. So it is an area of high activity and high growth for us and high emphasis in terms of our work there to get that done.
Charlie Shugart:So when we talk about increased populations, not just in Williamson County, but across the state and the basin, you know, you talked a little bit about how we need to develop new water supply. How do you develop new water?
Matt Phillips:You know, there a lot of different ways, and everybody's looking at all the different ways. And it's really important to remember, for any basin or even for the state, there's not gonna be any one solution. It's gonna take a multitude of different water supply strategies to get us there. Conservation will be one of them. Folks will have to develop the ability and start using water differently.
Matt Phillips:And I think what will drive that is the cost of water is going to go up, especially as we implement some of these other bigger water supply strategies. Some of the other strategies include reservoirs. We are in the process of permitting a reservoir that we're gonna build in lower basin called Allen's Creek, and maybe we'll have a whole podcast just on Allen's Creek at some point.
Charlie Shugart:Definitely.
Matt Phillips:Very possible. We are looking at doing aquifer storage and recovery at our East Williamson County plant. It's actually part of the expansion, and that's the process by which you take excess surface water when you have it, you treat it, and we have the treatment plant right there. So we have the ability to do it. So we got the lake there, we got the treatment plant there.
Matt Phillips:So that's two of the things we need. We treat it right there and then you inject it down into the ground and you build a bubble of water that you can then access later, particularly when you're in drought times and your reservoirs are struggling. You've built up that bank or that reserve. So aquifer storage and recovery is one of the strategies that a lot of folks are looking at. Another one that we're looking at is reallocation of water in one of our existing reservoirs.
Matt Phillips:When I say one of ours, it's one of the ones in our system, but it's actually owned and operated by the Corps of Engineers, and that's at Lake Whitney. So Lake Whitney has a large amount of water in it that has not been allocated to water supply. And
Charlie Shugart:But what what do you mean exactly that it hasn't been allocated to water supply? It's just like
Matt Phillips:It's just kind of what we believe to be extra water. So Lake Whitney has three functions. So a lot of Corps reservoirs just have two, flood control and water supply. Lake Whitney has three, so it's got flood control water supply and it also produces hydroelectric power. Since Lake Whitney was built, there has been a large amount of water, hundreds of thousands of acre feet that have just been held in reserve for hydropower production.
Matt Phillips:So that one is really important one for us mainly because if you're able to reallocate water within an existing reservoir, the infrastructure is already there. You know, Lake Whitney has the ability to be a game changer for basin because so many of the other projects that we work on take years to put in place because of all the infrastructure you've gotta build, the permitting that you have to do. Lake Whitney has the ability to make a large amount of water available in the short term. So potentially within the next three to five years. And that's that's light speed when you're talking about developing water supply.
Matt Phillips:And it has the ability to do that without having major negative impacts on the other uses of the reservoir. So flood control, hydropower. It also won't have any negative effects on recreation at the lake. So life at the lake in terms of lakeside living and lakeside businesses and recreation will be the same after reallocation as it is now. And the other major thing is the additional water supply created by Whitney will benefit all of the areas around the lake that need water, the local area, the region, and other areas of the basin. And infrastructure with water is the expensive part. But in this case, the dam's already there, the water's already there. It's more of a modeling exercise and a study which tells you the water's available and then we've got to go to TCEQ and get a water ride. But that to us is a huge deal for us if we could get additional water at Lake Whitney.
Matt Phillips:You know, some of the other ways that people are looking to develop water is groundwater. Groundwater's so much different than surface water in terms of how it's regulated and again, you could have a whole separate podcast on that but you may want to bring in groundwater experts because we're surface water people. But groundwater isn't governed by the state. It's a private property right. But there is a lot of interest from cities and water districts and entities throughout our basin in developing and transporting groundwater.
Matt Phillips:That's where it becomes controversial because the area where you want to take the groundwater from never wants to see it leave.
Charlie Shugart:Now, do we have a role in groundwater?
Matt Phillips:We do not other than the fact that we plan to do aquifer storage and recovery and utilize Trinity Aquifer groundwater at our East Williamson County facility, which is property that we own right there in Williamson County. Other than that, we've explored the possibility of developing groundwater in the past. To us, it's it's really rife with litigation and controversy and issues with should you be able to transport it and the regulatory frameworks surrounding groundwater has always been really tricky for us, which is part of the reason that we've never jumped off into developing it as one of our main supplies. Now that doesn't stop others from doing it and there are others all throughout Central Texas that are looking to develop groundwater. So that's that's one of the ways.
Matt Phillips:And then I think or that's one of the strategies that that folks are looking at. And then I think another one is ultimately desalination. You know, everybody always points to that. Hey. We've got, you know, this huge ocean of water literally in the in you know, right next to Texas.
Matt Phillips:Why aren't we desalinating water? And there are the city of Corpus Christi is in the process of, you know, finalizing a plant to do that.
Charlie Shugart:And just briefly explain to people who don't know what desalination is, what that means.
Matt Phillips:It's where you take salty water and you run it through a massive filter at a high amount of energy to try to remove all the salt out of it and turn it into drinking water. It is expensive water because of that very process. It demands a high level of energy to be able to remove salt from water and then you have to figure out what to do with the brine that's left over, which is always an issue because there's environmental issues associated with it. And desalinating water has always been considered an unbelievably expensive proposition. I think as we get further into the future, the cost of it are going down or becoming more reasonable and that may be a function of the cost actually becoming more reasonable or our current water prices going up so much that they start to meet and then it looks more and more reasonable the fact that those deltas are starting to hit each other.
Matt Phillips:But I do think, you know, for the Brazos specifically, if you ever get to a point where desalination monies and makes financial sense, it could very well be a game changer for our basin. Because right now, we have all of this water in these upstream reservoirs that we at times release to the lower part of our basin. But if enough users in the lower part of our basin were able from a financial standpoint to convert to desalinated water, which right now there's not a ton of incentive for them to do it because their current water is pretty cheap, and that water is expensive. But if those if those numbers start to get closer together, then it allows you to reallocate water upstream that you're currently sending downstream, and it really does change the math in terms of water in our basin.
Charlie Shugart:When a drought does hit, it can last. We never know how long it's going to last and the amount of water that's left in these reservoirs is so important to manage adequately to ensure everyone has got the water that they need.
Matt Phillips:Yeah. And that, you know, droughts are interesting because of what you've said. You never know when they're gonna start and you never know when they're gonna end. You know, they're really difficult to plan for. They're really difficult to manage through, particularly the the really long ones. And it's funny from a public perception standpoint in terms of what they do to the reservoirs.
Matt Phillips:They're just ugly. I mean, they are. You know, the lakes get really low and everybody hates the way they look and, you know, you can't recreate as much, you can't use them as much. And, you know, it's just a matter of differing perspectives. We see the same thing and we see the reservoir doing its job.
Matt Phillips:You know, it caught water when it was wet and now it's being used when it's dry. Thank God we had the reservoir there to catch that water when it was wet because now we have something to use. If you were just relying on river flow, I don't think any of us would be here right now. You have to have those reservoirs to do that. Additionally, when lakes are really low from, you know, an aesthetic standpoint, it looks terrible.
Matt Phillips:But from a hydrological standpoint, our guys would sit there and tell you, oh, there's three or four or five or ten years worth of water still left in there. You know, that's that's how they see it because they're looking at it from a very different perspective, what what its real use is versus what its benefits are.
Charlie Shugart:Absolutely. So when we talk about customers and the people who are using it, who who are we talking about? Who's using the water?
Matt Phillips:So our customers are a mix of municipalities, industrial users, electric producers, and agricultural users. So that's really kind of the four main categories. In terms of municipal users, our largest municipal user is Bell County Water Control and Improvement District number one, which is located in Bell County. Then we have other major users in the I-35 Corridor such as the city of Georgetown, the city of Round Rock, city of Taylor. So those are some of our major users there.
Matt Phillips:So got a lot of municipalities. Industrial users think Dow Chemical, and we have another user named Gulf Coast Water Authority, and they are a multi user. They have some municipal use, some industrial use, and some agriculture use, but they actually provide most, if not all of the water to the whole Texas City Refinery area. Think Marathon Oil. So a huge economic driver for our state gets water through there.
Matt Phillips:Electric producers, you're talking TXU or Luminant and NRG. Those are two of the largest one. Then the ag folks, just a variety of them. Agriculture's a much smaller segment of our customer base. I think it's under 4%.
Matt Phillips:There is mining, but it's it's really even smaller. Mining to us is is sand and gravel mining and those kind of things. We have much less of that than than we have of the other uses.
Charlie Shugart:Every year, our hydrologists compile data from the previous calendar year and release how much water is used, by whom, and where, among other details. It's called the customer water use and reservoir accounting summary details. So if you love data, you can get on there and look at the amount of inflows into each reservoir, how much water was released for water supply, how much water was used by lakeside users. I mean, even how much water was just lost to evaporation. That's how detailed it is that everybody looks at the water supply that's in the basin and truly manage it.
Charlie Shugart:It's, like, down to these numbers for everyone. I'll give you an example. In 2024, 300,973 acre feet of water was used all across basin.
Matt Phillips:To put that into perspective, we've had some pretty high use years at times, particularly in droughts. Right? But we have water rights totaling around 700,000 acre feet. And I think even in our highest use year, driest, you know, the twenty eleven through twenty fifteen drought, I think we just touched around 400,000 acre feet. So that tells you how much water we still have in terms of I wanna say extra very carefully.
Matt Phillips:I don't mean in terms of extra, but just in terms of not being up against our max capacity. Now that's gonna change as population growth and and all of the growth we're seeing throughout the basin. But, you know, we're still in a pretty good spot from that perspective that even in in the driest of dry years, you know, we're still just over half in terms and in a normal to wait year, we're closer to 250 to 300,000 in terms of usage.
Charlie Shugart:You talked a little bit earlier about the environmental work that is done. Can you touch a little bit about exactly what our role is in that?
Matt Phillips:Our folks do a massive amount of sampling and water quality monitoring throughout our basin. We are the Clean Rivers representative for the state of Texas, and that's something that we work on in coordination with and that's I mean, for the Brazos Basin. And that's something we work on in coordination with TCEQ. So we have monitoring stations or monitoring sites all throughout the Brazos Basin and its tributaries. And what we do is we go take water samples and they look at they do species counts.
Matt Phillips:They look at what type of flora and fauna are growing in a particular segment.
Charlie Shugart:What type of what?
Matt Phillips:Flora and fauna. Don't ask me to explain that. What type of critters we'll just say that. What type of critters are present in a certain area because knowing what type of critters are present in a certain area can tell you what the water quality is like.
Matt Phillips:And so they're doing all of these assessments. A lot of those they bring back to our lab. They're tested. They're sent to TCEQ. And what we're looking for is one, to just understand the quality of those segments.
Matt Phillips:But two, to see if there are trends. To see if we're starting to see downward trends, to see if we're looking moving towards impairments in our water bodies. And I mentioned it earlier, you know, protecting our water supplies, making sure that it's of good quality, that we can supply it to folks. Well, the last thing in the world we need is for some segment of our basin to have a water quality problem such that it becomes not usable or something that we can't provide to our customers because then that's water off the table. Ton of their work goes toward that.
Matt Phillips:We have a NEELAP accredited lab, which, you know, to me just means that the data that we produce in our lab can be held up in a court of law. So it's legit. It's what I usually like to say.
Charlie Shugart:And NEELAP is the National Environmental Laboratory Accreditation Program.
Matt Phillips:Glad you knew that because I did not. I just always use the the the words NEELAP. They do an outstanding job if you ever drive by and you see guys and waiters out there with, you know, nets and things like that. It's it's our folks out there, you know, looking and trying to protect the quality of our water.
Charlie Shugart:Whether it's a 100 plus degrees or
Matt Phillips:Doesn't matter. They go out there no matter what the conditions are like. Sometimes I think I might envy their job until I think about it being freezing cold and going out there and then I'm just I'm a hard pass. I'm a hard pass on that.
Charlie Shugart:There's another aspect of our operations I feel like a lot of people aren't aware of, and that is our involvement in wastewater treatment.
Matt Phillips:So I think the BRA got involved in wastewater treatment maybe back in the sixties or seventies. And I think it came from the perspective of almost, again, back to that protect idea that, you know, wastewater treatment plants are gonna be discharging into waters in our basin, whether it's the tributaries or the Brazos itself.
Charlie Shugart:And I don't think a lot of people realize that's what happens.
Matt Phillips:Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's gotta go somewhere. And there there are some facilities that land apply. It is a thing that you can do.
Matt Phillips:But for the most part, they end up discharging back into a stream or river segment. And the water that's discharged, if it's done properly, is cleaner than the water it's going into. Okay? And TCEQ permits those and their job is to make sure that that's actually what's happening and that's also part of what goes into our environmental monitoring is looking at you know, discharge sites or sites downstream of those
Charlie Shugart:So it's much less of a ick factor than I feel like when people hear for the first time?
Matt Phillips:Way less of an factor. I think folks sometimes have the the preconceived notion that it's the same coming out as it was going in. Oh my god, it shouldn't. No. It gets treated to an extremely high standard.
Matt Phillips:So I think that was the the reason that we got involved and over time we've continued that process. All of the wastewater treatment plants where we work, we are an operator, meaning we don't own those facilities. So a city, for the most part, in in most cases, such as city of cities of Temple and Belton or city of Sugar Land or city of Clute, they actually own the facilities. They are there. So we are there as a contract operator, and we bring our expertise, our outstanding employees.
Matt Phillips:The guys that work on our treatment side are great, and we operate those facilities for them and make sure they stay in accordance with TCEQ standards and are doing their job. So to us, it makes a lot of sense just because there's a way in which we're helping protect water quality by being the operators of those facilities.
Charlie Shugart:Can you talk a little bit about how exactly we're funded?
Matt Phillips:So we are funded primarily through the sale of water and the other services we provide, like our contract water and wastewater operations. So we do not receive tax dollars. We do not have the ability to tax. We do not receive appropriations from the state, so the state does not give us money for our budget. So we are what's considered entirely a self funded entity.
Matt Phillips:So all of the water that we sell on a contract basis, we sell for a system rate with the exception of some older contracts that haven't quite yet converted to the system rate. And the revenue that we generate from selling that water and and providing those other services goes into our continual maintenance and upkeep of our dams and facilities, which is a huge part of what we do. You know, some of our dams our our newest dam was built in 1974. You know, these facilities are old. They're gonna have to be maintained.
Matt Phillips:So a lot of it goes into that. A lot of it goes into just our general operations and our staff and what it takes to run all of these facilities. And then a lot of it as we're moving forward is going to go into developing these new supplies that we're working on.
Charlie Shugart:So you mentioned the system rate. What does that mean?
Matt Phillips:So the system rate is is a rate that's set by our board every year that dictates the cost of our water for our system customers, those that buy water under our what we call a system water availability agreement. That system rate is adjusted each year by our board. It generally goes up each year by five to six to 7%, you know, and the the way that we explain that is the cost of water is never gonna go down. It's always gonna go up. The cost the cost of everything that we're doing increases every year in terms of maintaining our facilities and developing new supplies and all of that.
Matt Phillips:So it it is the rate that we charge our system customers for water. It gets a little bit more complicated when you try to explain the difference between a system customer and a non system customer. The BRA moved to a system rate years and years ago. I think it was in the late nineties that the BRA began to convert everyone to the to the same rate. So anyone that buys water from us pays the same rate.
Matt Phillips:When they did that, there were some old, what we call legacy contracts that were contracts currently in existence. Those are not currently at the system rate. Now our board has made a policy decision that as as older non system contracts expire, they will be converted to a system rate under the system contract. And so everyone that buys water from us eventually under the system rate will pay the same rate, will all pay into the system and then that system funds everything that we do.
Charlie Shugart:So someone couldn't come in and say, you know, I'm gonna offer you 10 times the amount of cost of what someone else is paying you for water so I can have access to water?
Matt Phillips:No. We don't auction off our water. It's not the way that we make available. We will make water available at the system rate when we have it to anyone who is able to use it for a beneficial purpose.
Charlie Shugart:How do we determine who gets the water? Like, who can be customers?
Matt Phillips:Well right now, we have to have some water to sell to be able to do that.
Matt Phillips:right now we don't. In terms of the 700,000 acre feet approximately that we have rights to, we're pretty much fully contracted out. We don't have any additional long term water to make available right now. But, you know, when we develop our next source of supply, whether that's the Allen's Creek or Whitney reallocation or something else, we do have a waiting list for water where folks have reached out to us saying, when you develop additional water, I wanna be on the list of the folks that you talk to. So when we do have an additional supply available, we'll reach out to the folks on that list and see if what we have for them is still accurate and then go from there in terms of what we can actually make available.
Matt Phillips:So in terms of how we would make water available, it would follow kind of that process. Whatever next source we look at, whatever next source we develop, we're then gonna look to that list. We also try to provide water in accordance with the state and regional water plan. So we like to have customers whose needs are recognized in the state and regional water plan, which is a whole another process that I brought up that we're probably gonna need to talk about.
Charlie Shugart:Just briefly explain what that is.
Matt Phillips:So the state has a process to plan for future water demands and sources where they broke the state up into 16 regions. Each region looks at every individual what's called WUG or water user group
Charlie Shugart:WUG.
Matt Phillips:Which is a which is a water user. They look at its population projections and are they gonna need additional water and what's gonna supply it. And so that's probably the simplest way that I can that I can go through it without getting into way more detail than we want to. And then each of those 16 regional water plans is is kind of is submitted to the water development board, and they use that to build the state water plan, and they do it every five years. And it's really kind of looked at as, okay, the road map for how we're gonna meet our water needs in the future.
Matt Phillips:From a very simple standpoint, it looks at population projections, water demands, potential water shortages, how do you fill those gaps, and what are gonna be the supplies to do that. But we like to provide water in accordance with the state and regional water planning process because we support that process and it is kind of the road map for how we're supposed to do it. So we would look to our waiting list. We would look to the state water plan. And given the demands that we have in our basin, it is impossible that any one of our next sources is gonna meet all of them.
Matt Phillips:It's there's just no way. You know, it's gonna take multiple sources, they're not all gonna come online at the same time because that's just not how water works. So typically, what we've done is, you know, we look at the requests that we have from folks, and we tend to prorate it across the board. So everyone gets some of what they've asked for. Not everyone gets all of what they've asked for.
Matt Phillips:And we say, once we develop our next source, we'll come back, and we'll try to fulfill the rest of that need.
Charlie Shugart:You talked a little bit about the difference between the amount of water rights that we have permitted versus the amount that we use. So that what's in between, that's not available to other people then?
Matt Phillips:No. Because it's under contract.
Charlie Shugart:To somebody else?
Matt Phillips:Yeah. Okay. So and that's really something that folks I don't know understand. Some entities, particularly cities, contract for water in excess of what they need right now so that they can grow into it.
Charlie Shugart:Well, buffer space.
Matt Phillips:It's buffer space. It's it's for their growth. They know that they're gonna grow and eventually they're gonna be using that water but they're not using it right now. But because they have it under contract, it is not available to someone else. Now we do allow between you know, we do allow our customers to do water resell agreements.
Matt Phillips:Part of the reason we do that is we know that we can't always meet a need, but we do allow our customers to resell their water to someone else. And that is a transaction that we have no involvement in. Whatever price they negotiate, it's an arm links transaction. All we do is sign off on, okay. Yes.
Matt Phillips:You can do the resell agreement. That's our only involvement in that. It is a good way to meet a short term need. We don't allow resell agreements to last for a really long time because the last thing that we want is for some entity that is buying water from one of our customers to become dependent on that water and then our customer now need it and need to use it and then they're stuck without any water. So we always look at those as short term solutions, not necessarily long term solutions.
Charlie Shugart:We're not selling water on a day to day basis?
Matt Phillips:Yes. Our our contracts are, you know, thirty years typically. And they they can go a little bit longer just depending.
Charlie Shugart:And now could you tell me a little bit about the policymaking arm of the the BRA?
Matt Phillips:The overarching policy making arm of the BRA rests with our 21 member Board of Directors who are appointed by the governor. So they set the broad policies of the BRA in terms of how we budget and how we function and how we, you know, handle a lot of the day to day business, but they set it at a very broad level in terms of our policies and procedures and their bylaws and things like that. So that's really the policy making arm of the BRA, whereas the day to day operations are left to the general manager and then the staff that the general manager employs.
Charlie Shugart:So these board positions, are these paid positions?
Matt Phillips:No. They are volunteer positions as are most, if not all, river authority boards. You know, people do it because they wanna serve and they see an opportunity to be involved with something that really big deal in our state, and that's trying to supply water to Texas.
Charlie Shugart:So the meetings that they hold, is this something the public can come to and listen or ask questions?
Matt Phillips:Absolutely. So the public is welcome to attend any of our meetings. We usually meet the last Monday every other month starting in January. We do adjust that for certain holidays like Memorial Day and Thanksgiving, so we'll bump them up or back. In addition, and we were kind of an early adopter of this, we live stream our meetings on YouTube so people can tune in from their home and watch our meetings.
Matt Phillips:Now obviously, in those, they can't necessarily interact. They need to be here in the building to be able to interact or or address the board. But, you know, I would say we're one of the few that adopt that many, many years ago so that people could at least watch, you know, the board meetings live and keep track of our activities.
Charlie Shugart:Because I don't think a lot of people realize that the basin is as big as it is.
Matt Phillips:Oh, yeah.
Charlie Shugart:So with it stretching from the Texas, New Mexico border all the way down to the Gulf, the reach and the impact that operations and the things that we do have affect a lot of people who maybe can't just drive up to Waco for a meeting.
Matt Phillips:Right. Right.
Charlie Shugart:So we do a lot of different work with a lot of different projects, and a lot of different locations. So through all of that, who are we accountable to?
Matt Phillips:Oh, man. It's a good one. I like that one. So let's go through it in terms of levels. As a public entity, we are accountable to the public.
Matt Phillips:We interact with the public. The public uses our reservoirs and we're subject to open meetings and open records and all the things that any public entity is subject to. So we see ourselves as absolutely accountable to the public because we are a public governmental entity and that's how you should view it from a transparency standpoint. It's part of the reason that we started live streaming our board meetings years ago. We wanted folks to be able to see what we were doing.
Matt Phillips:We're not hiding anything. You don't have to come to Waco to see it. Here you go. Take a look. It's right here on YouTube.
Matt Phillips:We are accountable to the legislature. The legislature created us. So they have the ability at any given time to change statute and change how we can do things. Everything we can and can't do is dictated somewhere in the law, and so they have the ability to change it. We're obviously accountable to our board.
Matt Phillips:You know, our board is the main policy making arm of our organization. They are appointed by the governor and approved by the Senate, so we're absolutely accountable to them. We're accountable to the regulatory agencies that have oversight of our operations. So think TCEQ, in some instances, EPA.
Charlie Shugart:That's the Environmental Protection Agency.
Matt Phillips:Environmental Protection Agency. So we have to be accountable to them. We have to report to them. We are accountable to an arm of TCEQ, and this may elicit a whole another subject of questions, which is called the Brazos River Watermaster Master, which is essentially a regulatory framework within TCEQ specific to the Brazos Basin, that ensures that water right holders are taking water at the time and sequence that they're supposed to in terms of the seniority of their water rights so that nobody's taking their water out of place.
Charlie Shugart:To holding people accountable.
Matt Phillips:Correct. To make sure they're taking water when they're supposed to. We're obviously accountable to our customers, which to us is a big one. You know, our customers are who fund our operations, and we want to use and spend and be accountable for the funds they entrust us with wisely. We wanna make sure that we're doing a good job with the money that they give us because it you know, we will use those funds in beneficial ways to benefit our customers by developing additional water supplies.
Matt Phillips:So that those are probably the main levels that I can think of. I'm sure there may be
Charlie Shugart:A lot of different areas.
Matt Phillips:A lot of different areas. Absolutely. And one of the things that we've always prided ourselves on is transparency. A lot of government entities get hit all the time that, you know, you're secretive and we don't know enough. My goodness, as far as BRA goes, there's very little about us that you can't find on our website.
Matt Phillips:There's very little about us that you can't find on our social media. We put everything out there, and anything that you don't know, just ask us.
Charlie Shugart:Why? Why do we make that a priority?
Matt Phillips:Because we should. I think that in order to interact with the public as you're doing your business, like some like our regular lake operations or some of these major projects we're gonna have to do, some of them are controversial. They're big deals. They're gonna take up property. They're going to change areas in terms of what they look like and, you know, we're gonna be doing thing and we may be moving water from place to place and things that people don't like.
Matt Phillips:And you may not always be able to get folks to agree with what you're doing, but if you start with some level of trust that you're not trying to hide things, it really helps those discussions. And that's how we've always tried to look at it. It at least makes the playing field more honest and easy whenever they know that you're going to be an open, honest entity and answer any questions that they have and provide them with any data that they have. And, you know, I think it's just always something that we've made a priority for our organization, as most should.
Charlie Shugart:Overall, how would you say the BRA measures its effectiveness in carrying out its objectives?
Matt Phillips:That's a good one. Is everybody else gonna get asked that one? That's what I wanna know. You know, to me, I'll go with that a couple of different ways. I'll go back to the transparency thing, and we always maintain ourselves as a transparent open organization.
Matt Phillips:That to me is effective. That is an important measurement of effectiveness. But from an operational standpoint, from a water supply standpoint, I think continually being able to deliver the water that we have promised contractually to our customers is a massive measure of our success. If there's ever a point where we can't do that, then we have failed. We have obviously done something wrong by either not maintaining our facilities or not accounting for the way that we're supposed to account for water correctly in terms of how we contract for it.
Matt Phillips:Continually being able to deliver the water that we've contracted to our customers. And I think as we move forward, we will measure some of our success by our ability to develop additional water supplies. I think it will become a measure of our success. Someone is going to have to do it. The BRA is uniquely situation to to be able to do a lot of it.
Matt Phillips:We can't do all of it. I'm very clear about that. We can't develop every future water supply for the Brazos Basin. Folks are gonna have to do some of it on their own. But I think our ability to develop additional develop and deliver additional water supplies as we move forward is gonna be a massive measure of our success as an organization.
Charlie Shugart:Is there anything else that you would like to add that we haven't touched on that?
Matt Phillips:You know, the BRA is an outstanding organization to work for. I've been here for most of my professional life, if you could call me a professional, which is sometimes a stretch and we own a lot of assets, dams, and pipelines, and all that kind of stuff. And we always say this, and it's true. And I think it's always worth repeating every time we do one of these and anybody else who does these, you know, if they get asked that question, maybe they'll say the same thing. The most important asset we have is our people.
Matt Phillips:We try to hire and retain outstanding individuals. And all throughout our basin and all throughout our organization and in our Central Office, we have outstanding dedicated employees who believe in our mission, who are dedicated to accomplishing that mission. And I think that will always be a focus of ours is not just to have folks who are clocking in and clocking out, not just to have warm bodies in places, but people that, you know, really believe in organization and wanna be part of something. And that I think that's part of the reason that we keep people for as long as we do. We've got great retention just because we hire outstanding people.
Matt Phillips:So the best asset we own besides the brick and mortar stuff is the people that work here. And probably, obviously, very much more important than the brick and mortar stuff.
Charlie Shugart:And you really know that even in just the six years that I have been here, just the passion you see behind people who get excited about their jobs and what they do and understand the importance behind it.
Matt Phillips:Yeah. And we have people who wake up excited to come do water accounting, and I don't know how you'd be getting excited for that. And modeling and things like that. I don't know how you get excited for it, but they do.
Charlie Shugart:We appreciate people of all skill types.
Matt Phillips:And we are glad to have that.
Charlie Shugart:Alright. Well, there are a lot of ways to stay in touch with the projects, the work that the BRA is doing on. We have an email newsletter that goes out you can sign up for. We are on a bunch of social media sites, Facebook, X, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Nextdoor. We'll answer your questions there along with your messages.
Charlie Shugart:And as Matt mentioned, you can attend our board meetings or watch them as they're livestreamed. And if you just, you know, wake up one morning with a question, you can always just email us. You can reach us at information@brazos.org, and we will help get you the information that you need. Matt, thanks for sharing all your insight and knowledge.
Matt Phillips:Thank you for having me. I hope it was both insightful and I shared some knowledge
Charlie Shugart:I do. I feel like my internal hard drive is fuller and significantly more interesting. So if you've got a topic about the Brazos River, the BRA, water supply, or more that you'd like to hear more about, feel free to reach out to us. Again, our email is information@Brazos.org. And with that, thanks for listening to Unpacking the Brazos River.