Water is the most essential resource for life—but in regions facing extreme weather, population growth, and limited groundwater, delivering it reliably requires robust infrastructure and careful planning. Across the Gulf Coast, utilities are tasked with ensuring a reliable, safe water supply while confronting long-term threats like land subsidence, aging infrastructure, and climate-driven disruptions. These challenges make the role of surface water systems more critical than ever.
Located just west of Houston, Texas, the North Fort Bend County Water Authority (NFBWA), provides surface water to retail water providers in the northern Fort Bend County region. By supplying surface water rather than groundwater, NFBWA helps mitigate land subsidence— the sinking of land caused by the over pumping of groundwater resources. Its work preserves the region’s limited groundwater supply and ensures a plentiful water resource for Fort Bend County residents for generations to come.
NFBWA currently delivers surface water via the Bellaire Pump Station and 53 miles of surface water lines to 36 water plants within its boundaries. Many residents and businesses depend on this water system, which delivers up to 19.5 million gallons a day of water to users across the county.
Because of the importance of NFBWA’s service to the community and environment, the authority must ensure its pump station has continuous power during grid outages. Grid outages can be caused by many things; however, in this region, the most prominent causes are related to severe weather, including hurricanes, summer heat, and winter storms. To prevent potential power disruptions in its operations, NFBWA entered into an agreement with Enchanted Rock, a Houston-based company that has reinvented how organizations ensure power resiliency for their operations, to implement a clean and quiet natural gas-powered microgrid.
Resiliency-as-a-Service
NFBWA selected Enchanted Rock based on its years of experience in providing resilient backup power during utility outages due to events such as Hurricane Harvey in 2017.
“We are delighted to find a trusted solution that addresses our reliability needs,” said Peter Houghton, president of the NFBWA Board. “This partnership enables us to better protect our community during grid outages.”
Enchanted Rock has a proven record as a resiliency provider, delivering long-duration backup power during the most adverse conditions. Using ultra-low emissions natural gas generators, the company provides cost-effective, integrated Resiliency-on- CallTM (iROCTM). Enchanted Rock maintains and operates the system, freeing NFBWA to focus on other things, such as operating and maintaining the water system. The resiliency service is managed and optimized 24/7/365 from Enchanted Rock’s Microgrid Control Center (MCC), which provides constant, worry-free protection from extended electrical outages.
The Enchanted Rock backup power solution uses natural gas generators, which have an uninterruptable supply of fuel from an extensive underground pipeline network. Historically, traditional diesel generators must be fueled by an outside source, and in the instance of a major weather event, diesel fuel can become unavailable due to transportation or supply chain issues. In addition to constant access to fuel, natural gas generators have lower emissions, delivering value for the environment and surrounding community.
A Strategic Approach to Reliable Power
Proactive planning and built-in redundancy are key to protecting essential services, especially those communities and people rely on every day like clean water. Enchanted Rock’s microgrids are designed to prevent disruptions, not just respond to them, ensuring critical infrastructure stays online even when the grid doesn’t.
“Partnerships like this with the North Fort Bend Water Authority are about keeping essential services available when the community needs them most,” said Greg Bowen, vice president of critical infrastructure with Enchanted Rock. “Reliable access to clean water is fundamental, and this solution helps ensure that residents across Fort Bend County aren’t left without it during power outages.”
In addition to NFBWA, the Fort Bend County Levee Improvement District No. 2 and the Gulf Coast Water Authority are government entities that are also served and protected by Enchanted Rock’s resiliency microgrids.
The water supplies communities depend on shouldn’t be at risk due to a lack of planning or backup power. The retail water providers of northern Fort Bend County can have peace of mind, knowing that their access to water won’t be interrupted by unplanned power outages. Likewise, Enchanted Rock’s microgrid relieves NFBWA of the same burden—never having to worry about power means never having to worry about a valuable resource being available to a community that depends on it.
Watch AWWA webinar featuring NFBWA and Enchanted Rock
