Prestonwood Country Club Has Allegedly Been Stealing Water from Dallas For a Quarter Century

[TexasTowelie]

Back in the '80s, Prestonwood Country Club opened a course in Plano known as The Hills. To irrigate the greens and fairways, they pumped water out of Indian Creek.

What the folks at Prestonwood didn't know at the time, or else chose to ignore, was that the water they were drawing from the creek, a tributary of the Elm Fork of the Trinity River, belonged to Dallas. This finally came to the attention of City Hall in 2011, when a tipster complained to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

No one knows for sure the value of the water that's been taken over the past three decades. Dallas Water Utilities Director Jody Puckett's best guess is in the ballpark of $500,000.

-snip-

The question the City Council faced today is 1) how best to collect Prestonwood's water debt and 2) whether to sell the country club water moving forward.

More at http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2014/02/prestonwood_country_club_has_a.php .

[stg81]

1. did the country club not notice they weren't getting water bills for irrigation?

[Ilsa]

2. It's a private club run by sociopathic CEOs.

I would bet they knew and hoped they'd never be discovered. It's the nature of that beast.

[malokvale77]

3. Yup...

I just got notice that my water bill is going up because of the drought, I use little water. Are they going to make these assholes pay? I doubt it. These jerks aren't even in Dallas County. They are on a totally different water supply.