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Weathering Texas’s Winter Storm at the San Jacinto River Authority
SJRA employees deice water supply structures during the February storm.
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he San Jacinto River Authority (SJRA) provides a range of raw water, drinking water, wastewater, and flood mitigation services to the region around Houston, Texas. During this February’s winter storm in Texas, the SJRA fared well: its backup generators, emergency readiness plans, and large inventory of replacement equipment allowed it to provide uninterrupted service to its customers and even to aid other agencies and facilities with drinking water. In this interview, SJRA General Manager Jace Houston and Operations Manager Jason Williams tell Municipal Water Leader about the agency and the reasons why it successfully weathered the storm. Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.
22 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | July/August 2021
Jason Williams: I started my career in water and wastewater infrastructure repair and replacement in Cleveland, Texas, in 1996 after I graduated from high school. In 1998, I began my operations career with the SJRA’s Woodlands division. I was promoted to the position of operations and maintenance manager for the SJRA Woodlands division in 2016 and to utility enterprise operations manager in 2020. Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about the SJRA. Jace Houston: There are probably a dozen river authorities in Texas. These are governmental entities created by our legislature in the first part of the 20th century to develop the municipalwaterleader.com
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE SJRA.
Jace Houston: My undergraduate degree is in civil engineering, and I went to law school after that. I’m an attorney by trade and have been working in Texas my entire career. I worked at the state capitol, where I was exposed to legislative policy work. In 1997, I ended up in the water business. In Texas, groundwater is managed completely separately from surface water. I worked on the groundwater
side of our water universe for the first 10 years of my water career as general counsel for the Harris Galveston Subsidence District (HGSD). In 2007, a management position opened at the SJRA, which is on the surface water side of Texas water, and I switched to a management, leadership, and water policymaking position. I started as the deputy general manager in 2007, and in 2012, our previous general manager retired, and the board promoted me to his position.
