Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 113, No. 285, Ed. 1 Sunday, May 14, 2017 Page: 3 of 40
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LOCAL/STATE
3A
Denton Record-Chronicle
Sunday, May 14, 2017
Houston set for $3B water project
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By Dylan Baddour
Houston Chronicle
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HOUSTON (AP)
Any
Houstonian who’s ever stalled
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out in a rush-hour gully washer,
swatted mosquitoes on a humid
summer afternoon or hauled
soggy carpet to the curb after a
neighborhood flash flood will be
forgiven for thinking the supply
of water is one thing they
needn’t worry about.
The Houston Chronicle re-
ports indeed, throughout the
city’s first century, the settlers
and entrepreneurs who settled
here tapped into generous un-
derground stores of water to
flood rice fields or run refineries.
In 1939, government scientists
reassured residents the local wa-
ter table should be fine even if
average pumpage should reach
50 million gallons daily.
But the decades kept passing,
the city kept growing and the
wells kept multiplying. Officials
watched the level of the water
underground steadily drop as
daily pumpage at times exceed-
ed 450 million gallons. Regional
aquifers were depleted as mil-
lions of people and businesses
drilled ever deeper.
Subsidence problems were
documented, and experts came
to recognize the supply could
not keep pace with demand.
Now, after decades of public
meetings and engineering con-
sultations, environmental-im-
pact studies and design propos-
als, a solution is in the works on
a massive scale: a $3 billion,
three-part chain of infrastruc-
ture projects to carry water more
than 40 miles westward from
the Trinity River and provide a
lifeline to the northern region
and burgeoning suburbs from
Spring to Tomball to Katy.
The undertaking involves
moving water 3 miles over a
ridge and into a 23-mile canal
that will feed Lake Houston.
Thanks to a five-fold expan-
sion of the water treatment
plant there, the water will be
pumped through 17 miles of pipe
large enough to drive a car
through.
The construction and related
work should employ about
2,500 people, according to esti-
mates from the city and the
builder of the canal.
“It’s the biggest water project
in the country right now,” said
Michael Bloom, a manager at
R.G. Miller Engineers. “It’s a
world-class project, really visible
if you’re in the water sphere.”
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Kim Brent, Beaumont Enterprise/AP
Robert Zoschke works on tuning and repairing a piano April ZL
at The Piano Center in Beaumont.
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Beaumont's Zoschke
carries on family
tradition as tuner
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Melissa Phillip, Houston Chronicle/AP
Jeffrey Benjamin, project director, walks along the shore of Lake Houston near where the new
intake structure will be built for the Northeast Houston Water Plant expansion in Humble.
War II and finishing his music
education, moved to Beaumont
after a salesman convinced him
David Thompson
Beaumont Enterprise
BEAUMONT (AP) - Robert
Zoschke hovers over an aging Bal-
dwin grand piano, a set oftools on
the bench beside him, carefully
adjusting the felt-covered ham-
mer and strings like an experi-
enced surgeon suturing veins.
“The piano can have the same
life span as a person,” Zoschke
said. “Just like us, it needs adjust-
ment, maintenance, sometimes
things need replacing. It’s the
thing I enjoy the most about
what I do — bringing the instru-
ment back to life.”
The Beaumont Enterprise
reports Zoschke, 53, owns Beau-
mont’s last brick-and-mortar
business devoted to fixing and
tuning pianos, a fading art much
in demand when his father,
Marvin Zoschke, opened the
Baldwin Piano Center in 1955 in
the heart of downtown. More
than 60 years later, the son’s
skills continue to benefit the best
musicians in Southeast Texas.
“The term piano tuner does
not capture what he does,” said
Chelsea Tipton, conductor of the
Symphony of Southeast Texas for
eight years. “He’s an artist. He
doesn’t just tune a piano, he
brings an aesthetic beauty to the
sound. Few can do what he does.”
Zosehke’s skills have become
less requested in an age of popular
music played on more affordable
electronic keyboards. Digital pia-
nos line his sales floor, a reminder
of a changing industry.
Zoschke learned the trade at
a young age, sitting next to his
father, who, after taking part in
73 combat missions in World
and nobody wants to find out.”
The CWA broke ground in
March on the canal, dubbed
Luce Bayou for the natural wa-
terway beside it, the first of the
segments of the system to begin
construction.
Lake Houston doesn’t have
enough water to wean the entire
region off groundwater, so the ca-
nal will import water from the
Trinity to boost its capacity. The
river, in turn, is fed by Lake Liv-
ingston, which the city has owned
water rights to since the 1960s.
Outflows from Lake Living-
ston will be increased to send
water down the new canal. Mov-
ing that much water could have
environmental consequences
along the way to Galveston Bay,
although the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers has said it expects
them to be “minimal.”
Other environmental groups
are less confident, although
none have organized a strong
pushback.
“Every time that you change
the flow of rivers you’re going to
have impacts on the bay, but we
don’t know exactly what those
impacts are going to look like,”
said Paula Paciorek, water re-
sources coordinator for the Gal-
veston Bay Foundation.
Studies already initiated still
“need to be completed so that we
know what we are up against,”
she said.
The chain of projects, should
they go forward and wrap up on
schedule, will fundamentally
shift how this region gets its wa-
ter within 10 years.
“For a couple of decades
they’ve been planning this,” said
Jeffrey Benjamin, project direc-
tor for the five-fold expansion of
the Northeast Houston Water
Purification Plant expansion
project.
Mackrena Ramos, senior as-
sociate at LAN, an engineering
firm that specializes in water in-
frastructure and is program
manager for II of the pipeline’s 13
segments, said a major chal-
lenge has been clearing the pipe-
line’s course through urbanized
areas, acquiring real estate and
planning to divert other utility
lines.
Other planners say the local
project could be the largest water
job underway in the world. It is
bigger than any other included in
a recent report on infrastructure
investment authored by the in-
ternational engineering firm AE-
COM for the U.S. Treasury.
That you probably haven’t
heard about it is no surprise,
said Dave Rexing, a member of
the American Water Works As-
sociation water utility council
and development manager of
the water authority serving Las
Vegas. Such life-giving endeav-
ors often are under-appreciated,
he said, no matter that water “is
the basis of life.”
“The infrastructure has
largely become an unnoticed as-
set,” he said.
But this project, financed by
the state of Texas’ water fund, is
an attention-grabber. North-
west Harris County pumps bil-
lions of gallons from under-
ground each year.
As wells have sunk deeper,
some hit salty water. Others in
nearby Montgomery County
stretched for nearly a mile into
water that came up hot and
smelled like sulfur. Drilling so
deep is expensive, but the region
currently has no alternate
source.
he could be successful opening a
piano store.
“Back then, the piano was the
TV in the home, the thing every-
one gathered around for enter-
tainment,” Zoschke said. “In ev-
ery catalog and department
store they sold them. It was the
hot ticket item, the big screen of
today.”
In 1960, Marvin moved the
store to its current location.
“My mother didn’t believe in
baby sitters,” Zoschke said. “She
would just drop me off and I
would watch my dad work. It’s
where I have many of my first
memories.”
Marvin died Jan. 20, 2011, at
Where possible, work crews
will be drilling underneath road-
ways to build in public rights of
way without disrupting traffic,
she said.
That pipeline should be com-
pleted by 2021 Another 7.5-mile
length will carry water to a pro-
posed pumping station on Texas
249. Another 40 miles of 8-foot-
wide pipe will carry water far-
ther west into Fort Bend County.
Work on the water treatment
plant expansion is set to begin
this summer and be completed
by 2024.
The Texas Water Develop-
ment Board has pledged about
$3.2 billion in low-interest loans
from the State Water Imple-
mentation Fund of Texas to fi-
nance the combined projects.
Costs will be split between the
city of Houston and five regional
water authorities in Harris and
Fort Bend counties in an effort
to meet long-term needs.
89.
Before he died, he told his
son, “We finally meet our de-
mise, but the music survives.”
It’s the music, though, that
helps him remember his father.
“People have stories they tell
me about him, 40, 50 years
back, about how he worked on
their piano or the way he
played,” Zoschke said. “It’s nice
to know he left such a memora-
ble impression on people.”
Zoschke does more than just
fix pianos. He teaches others
how to play, and his legacy can be
felt in the room of students — a
lifelong journey to keep the music
alive and in tune.
“It’s like another language,
and it’s a language that is univer-
sal,” Zoschke said. “Everyone can
be moved by music. Almost any
aspect of life has music, and
that’s not going to change.”
“There is a finite ability of the
Gulf Coast Aquifer to produce
water,” said Wayne Klotz, presi-
dent of the Coastal Water Au-
thority. “Nobody has ever deter-
mined what would happen if we
pumped it so hard that the water
pressure sunk below the aquifer,
INDICTMENTS
The following people were indicted by
a Denton County grand jury Thursday
at the Denton County Courts Building.
Listed are those indicted, their age,
charges and the law enforcement
agency that made the arrest:
■ Brian Cardoza, 20, possession of a
controlled substance, Corinth police
■ Brian Hilby, 33, possession of a
controlled substance with intent to
deliver, Corinth police
■ Joshua Lawson, 29, possession of
a controlled substance, Corinth
police
■ Christon Neumann, 42, possession
of a controlled substance, Corinth
police
■ Juan Rojas, 21, possession of a
controlled substance, Corinth police
■ Angela Hernandez, 41, possession
of a controlled substance, Denton
police
■ Victor Castaneda-Villa, 20, pos-
session of a controlled substance,
Lewisville police
■ Luis Acevedo, 34, possession of a
controlled substance, Little Elm
police
■ Arnold Santos, 20, possession of a
controlled substance, Little Elm
police
■ Brittany Davoult, 22, possession of
a controlled substance, Texas Depart-
ment of Public Safety
■ Destini Vaughn, 23, possession of a
controlled substance, Trophy Club
police
■ Michael Carney, 46, possession of a
controlled substance, Carrollton
police
■ Michael Cortez, 31, possession of a
controlled substance, Carrollton
police
■ Diamond Hoang, 22, two counts of
possession of a controlled substance,
possession of a controlled substance
with intent to deliver, Carrollton
police
■ Frank Oropeza-Avila, 25, pos-
session of a controlled substance,
possession of a controlled substance
with intent to deliver, Carrollton
police
■ Davila Navarro, 33, unauthorized
use of a vehicle, Carrollton police
■ Maiya Griffin, 22, engaging in
organized criminal activity, Denton
police
■ Jene Moore, 21, engaging in orga-
nized criminal activity, Denton police
■ Ciara Nunez-Parker, 23, engaging in
organized criminal activity, Denton
police
■ Deante Gordon aka Rodney Rob-
inson, 26, credit card abuse, Denton
police
■ Anthony Bothwell, 28, two counts
of credit card abuse, Denton police
■ Christopher Shed, 42, forgery,
Denton police
■ Bethie Manire, 24, possession of a
controlled substance, Denton police
■ Spencer Grimes, 30, possession of
a controlled substance with intent to
deliver, possession of marijuana,
Denton police
■ Antonio Gutierrez, 23, burglary of a
building, Denton police
■ Quinn Harris, 30, violation of sex
offender registration, Denton police
■ Thomas Pope, 36, theft, Denton
police
■ Joseph Webb, 19, burglary of a
building, Denton police
■ Michael Clark, 37, credit card
abuse, Denton police; possession of a
controlled substance, Corinth police
■ Michael Sasiain, 48, possession of
a controlled substance, Corinth police
■ Bruce Kiser, 61, injury to a child,
Denton County Sheriff's Office
■ Patrick Summerville, 28, aggravat-
ed robbery, Plano police
■ Kyle Daquilla, 26, forgery, Lew-
isville police
■ Bradley Davison, 28, unlawful
possession of firearm, possession of a
controlled substance, possession of
marijuana, Lewisville police
■ Vyctorya Shelton, 22, possession of
marijuana, Lewisville police
■ Eric Harless, 24, two counts of
possession of a controlled substance,
Lewisville police
■ Tracy Reilly, 52, violation of sex
offender registration, aggravated
assault, Lewisville police
■ Joseph Vanbrooker, 43, possession
of a controlled substance, Lewisville
police
■ Shannon Young, 36, possession of a
controlled substance, Lewisville
police
■ Corresta Galaviz, 37, driving while
intoxicated, Carrollton police
■ Trisha Mihalik, 39, driving while
intoxicated with child passenger,
Denton police
■ Bertin Zamora, 42, driving while
intoxicated with child passenger,
Denton police
■ Andrea Collins, 29, possession of a
controlled substance, Hickory Creek
police
■ Vidal Hernandez, 41, driving while
intoxicated, Keller police
■ Edward Cruz, 47, driving while
intoxicated, Lewisville police
■ Raul Ruiz-Solis, 67, driving while
intoxicated, Lewisville police
DECORATION DAY
OLD TRINITY
COMMUNITY
CEMETERY
Sunday, May 21,2017
2:00 Business Meeting
All interested parties welcome.
If unable to attend, donations
can be sent to:
Old Trinity Community Cemetery
c/o Weldon Burgoon
6562 Grissom Rd.
Denton, TX 76208
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JUMP IN AND Give TO
DFNTON PAPKS FOUNDATION
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Many Denton-area children can't afford swimming lessons.
You can help provide a life-saving skill, plus fun and fitness.
Donate at dentonparksfoundation.com
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GOT SWIMSUITS?
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Swimsuits for boys and girls, ages 5-12, are also needed for children
participating in the swim lesson scholarship program. Swimsuits can
be dropped off at the Denton Record-Chronicle located at 314 E.
Hickory by Friday, May 19. All swimsuits must be new with tags.
Questions: jennifer@dentonparksfoundation.com
Thank you for helping kids learn to swim!
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Parks, Scott K. Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 113, No. 285, Ed. 1 Sunday, May 14, 2017, newspaper, May 14, 2017; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1131739/m1/3/?q=Lamar+University: accessed June 4, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .