El Paso, Texas Claims They’re The First City in America to Recycle Their Water, Wichita Falls Says Otherwise

A special groundbreaking took place over the weekend in El Paso for what they're claiming is the first advanced purification system in the United States.

Drought stricken parts of Texas are looking for alternatives to save water. Cities do things like limiting outdoor watering, encouraging residents to use water-efficient appliances, restricting car washing, and sometimes even rationing water usage based on specific days or times. 

At a certain point though, if no rain is coming in the forecast, restricting water usage can only go on for so long before a city has to do something to get the people water. The City of El Paso is moving towards what they're calling a Pure Water Center. This center will be able to treat ten million gallons of wastewater a day and turn it into high quality water for the city to use.

The City of El Paso is a few years away from turning this facility on. It's expected to be ready to go at some point in 2028. However, El Paso may want to fact check that this is the first of these in the country because Wichita Falls started doing this almost a decade ago.

Back in 2014, it was announced that the city of Wichita Falls would begin construction on the Indirect Potable Reuse (IPR) Project, discharging water to Lake Arrowhead via a 17 mile pipeline. The Wichita Falls Reuse Project was able to process 16 million gallons a day. Articles from CBS News with headlines like, "From Toilet to Tap", got Wichita Falls national attention. Jimmy Fallon even made a joke about us on The Tonight Show when the plan was announced.

Hopefully the people of El Paso can get this system operating in the next few years. However, maybe don't say you're the first in the country to do so. Wichita Falls didn't get made fun of for years to take this claim from us. I remember people in town wearing the shirts above when the system went online.