US City Begins Construction of Surface Water Treatment Plant

The city of Sugar Land in Texas, US, has started building a $69m surface water treatment plant at Gannoway Lake with an allocation of $7.3m for the first phase of construction.

The plant will make use of raw water from the nearby city of Oyster Creek to produce nine million gallons of drinking water per day.

The project is expected to reduce ground subsidence caused by the removal of water from underground aquifers, which contributes to flooding problems in the region.

Sugar Land had previously created and filed a groundwater reduction plan, specifying groundwater reduction deadlines of 30% by 2013 and 60% by 2025.

The plant is expected to start operations in early 2013.