Bangs Irrigation Project

This is the city of Bangs water treatment facility. Right now the water is dirty and very much brown but it will get filtered through and come out at the other end, onto the river, nice and clean.

"We'll take a portion of that water and move it back into town and put it on the playing fields where the general public can enjoy it and they've already paid for it once, they might as well get it back," says Leo Smith, Bangs city administrator.

The water may not be drinkable, but it is usable.

"It flows downstream, multiple ranchers and landowners downstream utilize it. They swim in it, they fish in, their livestock drinks from it. There's nothing wrong with it," says Smith.

The project is divided into phases, with the first phase focused on watering the baseball fields.

"Even if somebody in our community or anywhere else isn't directly influenced by greener grass at our baseball parks, they will be directly affected by less water being sucked out of that straw in Lake Brownwood," says Bishop.

The possibility for the city of Bangs to make money is also present.

"There will be a spigot, an overhead spigot, that will allow the county or contractors to come and purchase water to be able to use on road compacts or construction projects which currently they can not do because of the drought restrictions."

The future phases will bring the creation of a water park, with the hopes of improving the quality of life for the citizens of Bangs.

"People say, bangs needs a Sonic, bangs needs this, bangs needs that. But you go talk to those people and they say other things need to come first. There has to people more people living there, more people working there," says Bishop.

As they say, if you build it, they will come.