Page 30 - Senior Link Magazine Summer 2026 - Online Magazine

THE WATER THAT

MUST HAVE

Seemed Impossible

by Richard Ellis As Levelland marks its 100th year, CRMWA stands
as one of the city’s most far-sighted decisions.

here are decisions that at best and absurd at worst. Yet partners with Amarillo, Pampa,
look wise the moment the push began in 1947 with a Borger, Plainview, Lubbock,
Tthey are made. Then there federal study request, followed Slaton, O’Donnell, Lamesa,
are decisions that look foolish by Congress authorizing the Brownfield, and Tahoka.
for years—too expensive, too Canadian River Project in 1950,
grand, too far-fetched—until time and the Texas Legislature creating That is what makes this story
reveals that they were not foolish CRMWA in 1953. On Nov. 24 of worth retelling now. Levelland
at all, but necessary. that year, voters in Levelland did not simply sign onto a water
and ten other member cities project. It signed onto a plan that
Levelland’s decision to join the confirmed its creation. We became asked people to think decades
Canadian River Municipal Water into the future.
Authority belongs in that second
category.

Imagine how the pitch must have
sounded in the late 1940s and
early 1950s. A group of Panhandle
and South Plains leaders wanted
to build Sanford Dam on the
Canadian River, create what
became Lake Meredith, and
then push that water through
hundreds of miles of pipeline
to cities scattered across the
region. For Levelland, that meant
buying into a project tied to a
water source 180 miles away.
At the time, when groundwater
still seemed dependable and
the Ogallala still felt like a
permanent resource, the idea
struck many citizens as excessive

30 Lubbock Senior Link