“One of the clichés that we use is ‘we keep things flowing, so you can keep going,'” the city of Lubbock director of water utilities, Aubrey Spears, said.

In November 2014, the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts’ office released a “Debt at a Glance” for the state of Texas through August of 2013. This site recorded Lubbock’s debt at $983,415,000.

In his State of the City address on the Jan. 13 2015, Lubbock Mayor Glen Robertson said the city currently has $1.15 billion in debt, with a majority of that coming from Lake Alan-Henry. A video of this can be found on the City of Lubbock website.

Spears said diversification is essential when it comes to water supplies. He said when one source of water is not doing well, it is vital to have other sources — both surface and groundwater.

“So, we have the surface water supplies, and we have a couple groundwater supplies, and we have a couple projects to upgrade our wastewater treatment plant to where we could even reuse water in the future,” Spears said.

“Diversification is so important so that you are not just tied to one supply. I think Lake Alan Henry is a very strategic project for a water supply for us. If we didn’t have that I think we would be having a difficult time making ends meet right now.”

In an email, Spears stated that the total construction cost of Lake Alan Henry was $157, 541, 222. The operation and maintenance costs are both more  than $2 million a year.

Spears said the city of Lubbock is very conscientious of the debt it takes on, but water is a necessary resource.

Spears said the safe yield for Lake Alan Henry is 16,000 acres per foot, and Lubbock only pulls out 8,000 acres per foot.

“We’re not even tapping the full potential of the lake,” Spears said. “Some get kind of jittery when they see it go from 100 percent to 58 percent; then it jumps back up, but that’s the nature of reservoirs — particularly here in West Texas. We actually have to build reservoirs larger here than in East Texas because we have these pulse events where we need to capture that water. We would have loved to capture that water from 2010 that went over the spillway.

“But, Lake Alan Henry has been created primarily for a drinking water supply. There are some people enjoying some of the amenities, like bass fishing and building homes, but it is primarily a drinking water lake.”