Throughout the years the city of Lubbock has had many different water sources. Aubrey Spears, the city of Lubbock director of water utilities, said that with the Ogallala aquifer being mined heavily for water, diversification of water resources was important.
“When Lubbock began in about 1909,” Spears said, “a lot smaller than today, we had a well here in the city, and that’s all that we used. And as time went on , and we got bigger and we needed more water. The Ogallala aquifer was being mined heavily for agriculture in this area and we could no longer really compete with Ag in Lubbock County, so we started look for other sources of water.”
Spears said that Lubbock is one of 11 cities that forms the Canadian River Municipal Water Authority, or CRMWA, with Lubbock and Amarillo being the two largest cities involved. Lake Meredith was the primary drinking source in the 1960s until 2012 when the authority had to stop drawing water from it.
“That was about the same time that we turned on the switch for Lake Alan Henry,” Spears said. “And with Lake Meredith, over the last two years we’ve actually seen an increase in the water inflows, and so this last summer we actually started using Lake Meredith some. Just for a few months and not during the winter months. We actually anticipate using it during these summer months. Lake Meredith is starting to come back, it just all depends upon the rainfall patterns and inflows that we get. Lake Meredith is not totally gone but we’re not relying on Lake Meredith as a primary water source. “
