Ever Caught A Crappie At Lake Nasworthy?
The photos of Lake Nasworthy on tourist websites around Texas are stunning. Truly we are lucky here in the San Angelo area to have such a beautiful body of water to enjoy.
Fortunately, no one was developed smell-a-vision yet. If potential tourists and others were to get a whiff of some of the smells coming from certain parts of the lake, they might think twice about visiting.
In fact, San Angelo Councilman Tommy Hiebert told SanAngeloLive, that he knows of many businesses that had to close down or move because of obnoxious methane gas smells caused by the outdated, band-aided sewer system.
The problems with the outdated system are numerous. It takes 135 grinder pumps, which are a necessary part of breaking down poop and other things in the sewer, so the wastewater can be piped to the treatment plant.
The treatment plant is a long way from Lake Nasworthy. It is on the far east side of the city. That means that crap has to travel a long way to hit the water fans and other equipment at the sewage treatment plants. It requires pumping, re-pumping, and 26 lift stations to get there.
I'm certainly not going to pretend to be a sewage expert. Suffice it to say, that all this piping should it fail, would cause a full-scale environmental disaster in the lake. You could literally end up swimming or fishing in crap.
Not only is all this business unpleasant, but it is also putting a serious damper on fully developing the area around Lake Nasworthy, including our regional airport which seems to be very limited, to say the least.
Long story short, our city leaders have approved the 50+ million dollars it is going to take to replace this system. The financing is coming from enterprise funds from the Sewer and Water Utilities accounts and not the city's general fund. Like most of us, the city will finance the project over 25 years.
This is all good news. Soon, we won't have to make excuses to our out-of-town visitors for the smells that sometimes emulate from the Lake. I don't think, for one minute, my family ever bought my excuses for the smell.
I always tried to blame it on the winds being just right from Amarillo.
This couldn't come a minute too soon. The big game fish in the lake gain Lake Nasworthy high praise from anglers everywhere. We can rest assured that no one will be catching crappie in the lake anytime soon.
