Business View Civil and Municipal | April 2021

44 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL ARIL 2021 to suffer the consequences of unusual climatic events, but if you let it happen a second time without taking any measures, that’s unforgivable.” Part of the plan to defend Baytown against future freezes, includes a new water plant. The $50-million-dollar project will provide Baytown with 6 million gallons of potable water daily and the city will have a total of 30 million gallons of water on hand. The plant even has a desalinization component that, when up and running, will allow Baytown to use water straight from the Gulf of Mexico. The city currently has four wastewater plants, and they continue to work on initiatives to aid overflows – dramatically decreasing overflows where the sanitary system couldn’t accommodate heavy rainfall. Exacerbating this problem is the community’s older section of homes with lateral pipes connected to Baytown’s trunk lines. This allows water seepage into the pipes causing more Chambers County, as well as other charitable organizations. They help individuals get a leg up and hopefully become participants in Baytown’s prosperity.” Caring for citizens was a priority during Winter Storm Uri this past February, when Baytown endured freezing temperatures and went hours without water. Along with more than 2,200 other Texas water authorities, Baytown issued a boil water order, because its water system lost both pressure and water. The 40-year-old water plant was engineered to accommodate sub-tropical environments, not ones in 17° Fahrenheit. Following the storm, the city presented the council and Water Authority Board with an After Action Report (AAR) outlining steps it will take to strengthen its infrastructure against future events. “We learned a lot from Hurricane Harvey in August 2017,” says Davis. “We haven’t had a similar hurricane, but we believe once something like that happens, it’s foolish to believe it won’t happen again. The first time it’s understandable