Water Utility Annual Report

Fort Worth continues to grow, and that growth requires significant investment in the water and wastewater system.

Our mission remains clear: to provide high-quality drinking water and wastewater services while operating efficiently, responsibly, and with an eye toward long-term affordability.

This year’s annual report, Building for the Future, highlights how Fort Worth Water is planning today to ensure reliable service for the community tomorrow.

Fort Worth continues to grow, and that growth requires significant investment in the water and wastewater system. Much of our work this year focused on preparing the system for continued growth while maintaining the reliability our customers expect.

We are moving forward with one of the largest capital improvement programs in the Utility’s history, investing in treatment plants, pipelines, pump stations, and storage facilities that will serve Fort Worth for decades to come. These projects are carefully planned and phased to manage costs, address aging infrastructure, and meet evolving regulatory requirements while minimizing impacts to customers.

Growth is especially evident in the northern areas of the city, where new neighborhoods and businesses continue to place greater demand on the water system. Active construction projects include an expansion at the Eagle Mountain Water Treatment Plant, water transmission main extensions, and three additional storage tanks that will help us keep pace with growth while strengthening system reliability.

At the same time, replacing older cast-iron water lines and improving redundancy across the system reduces the risk of service disruptions and main breaks.

Beyond building new infrastructure, we remain focused on protecting what we already have. Reducing water loss, preventing sanitary sewer overflows, and protecting waterways are critical to responsible system management. Through proactive leak detection, targeted sewer rehabilitation, preventive maintenance, and strong environmental programs, Fort Worth Water has continued to make measurable progress—reducing overflows, improving water loss performance, and strengthening compliance with state and federal requirements.

Building for the future is not only about infrastructure—it is also about partnership. Customers play an important role by using water wisely, reporting issues promptly, and staying informed. Small actions, especially during peak summer months, can make a meaningful difference in managing demand and supporting a resilient system.

On behalf of the Fort Worth Water team, I appreciate the trust our community places in us every day. We remain committed to investing responsibly to support system growth and delivering clean water done right—today and for generations to come.

Mission:

Clean Water Done Right Every Time

The Water Utility enables the Fort Worth community to thrive with clean water done right every time. The Utility is responsible for providing drinking water, wastewater and reclaimed water service that keeps the community healthy and protects the environment.

Vision:

Exceeding Expectations

To be the premier water utility focused on exceeding customer expectations through value-driven innovative services.

Focus Areas:

Fort Worth Water’s four focus areas reflect the Utility’s commitment to serving a growing and diverse community with excellence. These priorities guide how we plan, invest, and make decisions today to ensure reliable, sustainable service for the future.

Each focus area represents a core responsibility of the Utility—supporting and developing a skilled workforce, using data and technology to strengthen operations and guide decision-making, maintaining affordability and equitable access to water services, and protecting the natural environment through responsible stewardship.

Together, these focus areas help the Utility stay aligned with community needs, improve transparency and accountability, and ensure that every investment made today supports long-term resilience and value for Fort Worth.  

Utility History

The Fort Worth Water Utility is an Enterprise Fund of the City of Fort Worth. It receives no tax dollars and operates on its revenues and fees.

The Utility is owned and operated by the City of Fort Worth. Under its Council-Manager form of government, the mayor and city council oversee general administration, make policy and set the budget and rates.

The city manager, appointed by the city council, carries out the daily administrative functions, including the Water Utility.

The water director oversees the executive management staff, which oversees the Utility’s operations. Water and wastewater divisions include strategic operations, field operations, customer care, plant operations, management services, financial services, and capital delivery. 

Management Team 2025

Customer Service Area

Wholesale customers include: Aledo, Arlington, Benbrook, Bethesda Water Supply, Blue Mound, Burleson, Crowley, Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, Dalworthington Gardens, Edgecliff Village, Euless, Everman, Forest Hill, Grand Prairie, Haltom City, Haslet, Hudson Oaks, Hurst, Keller, Kennedale, Lake Worth, Northlake, North Richland Hills, Pantego, Richland Hills, River Oaks, Roanoke, Saginaw, Sansom Park, Southlake, Trinity River Authority, Trophy Club, Watauga, Westlake, Westover Hills, Westworth Village, White Settlement and Willow Park.

Revenues and Expenses  

Operational efficiencies and disciplined financial management allow Fort Worth Water to maintain affordable water and wastewater rates while supporting long-term system needs. In FY2025, targeted rate adjustments were implemented to address rising costs and ensure continued financial stability as the Utility invests in critical infrastructure and operations.

The Water Utility is funded solely by the rates and fees it assesses and collects and operates independently as an Enterprise Fund, separate from the General Fund, of the City of Fort Worth. No property or sales tax dollars are used to fund water and wastewater operations. Water and wastewater rates have two components – a volume charge and a fixed monthly service charge based on water meter size.

The following is a summary of revenues and expenses for Fiscal Year 2025.

Operating revenues include such things as the sale of treated water and account setup fees. Non-operating revenues are interest earned and transfers in from other city departments. Operating expenses include such things as the cost to buy and treat water. Non-operating expenses include debt service payments.

For more details, visit the The Fort Worth Lab's website by clicking here.

Total Revenues vs Total Expenses

Where does your dollar go?

Fort Worth Water maintains over 8,110 miles of pipe. That’s enough to cross all the way across Texas 10 times. Following are some figures that show the scope of services the Utility provides.

• 1.4 million people rely on Fort Worth Water every day

System Footprint

• 4,104 miles of pipe for distribution
• 3,994 miles of pipe for collection
• 12.2 miles of pipe for reclaimed water
• 305,313 meters
• 22,953 fire hydrants

Treatment Facilities

• 5 drinking water treatment plants
• 1 water reclamation facility

Pumping & Storage Capacity

• 23 booster pump stations
• 30 storage tanks

Capital Investment Trends

Cast-Iron Pipe Replacement

A major priority for the Utility continues to be the replacement of cast-iron pipes in the older areas of the system. These old pipes account for more than 80% of our water main breaks. Once at more than 800 miles of cast-iron pipe in our system, our focused efforts have reduced the inventory to just over 700 miles, of which 150 miles are currently in design and 47 miles are under construction. These projects include several critical downtown pipelines. This replacement program is already lowering costs by reducing emergency repairs and water loss from pipes.

Capital Spending Growth

Bond Rating

The Standard and Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch ratings have remained AA+, Aa1 and AA, respectively. All outlooks are stable. Bond ratings are an assessment of credit worthiness and can affect the City's ability to borrow money.

Building Careers That Keep the Water Running

Fort Worth Water is powered by people. With more than 1,000 employees across seven divisions, the Utility relies on a skilled, dedicated workforce to keep water flowing safely and reliably to an ever-growing region. Every role, whether in the field, at one of the six treatment plants, or behind a computer screen, plays a part in delivering essential water and wastewater services to the Fort Worth community and beyond. Building a reliable system starts with training and supporting the people who operate it every day.

Supporting employees means making deliberate investments in their success while removing barriers to growth. Many roles in the water and wastewater field require highly specialized skills not commonly found in other industries, and Fort Worth Water has intentionally built training programs, certification opportunities, and clear career ladders to support long-term careers, not just immediate roles. Opportunities such as CDL training and in-house TCEQ licensing require significant planning, resources, and funding, but they create transparent pathways for advancement and help secure the expertise needed to serve a growing city. In a competitive workforce environment, these investments play a critical role in attracting, retaining, and preparing skilled professionals to operate and protect a complex public water system.

To ensure opportunity is accessible, the Utility covers the costs associated with licenses, renewals, upgrades, and required testing. By removing financial barriers, employees can focus on developing their skills and advancing their careers rather than absorbing the cost of entry and advancement. 

When employees grow, the entire system benefits through improved safety, efficiency, and continuity, resulting in stronger service for the community. Professional development extends beyond technical certifications. Employees also have access to citywide learning resources which offer courses focused on leadership, communication, and other essential skills. Employees may also qualify for tuition reimbursement to pursue job-related degrees that prepare them for future roles within the city and strengthen the Utility’s long-term talent pipeline.

By investing time, resources, and trust in its workforce, Fort Worth Water supports employees in building meaningful careers. Working at the Utility offers more than job stability. It offers the opportunity to grow professionally while helping protect and sustain one of the community’s most essential resources, now and for the future.

Empowering Customers with Data

Access to clear, timely information matters, especially when it comes to essential services like water. To strengthen transparency and trust, Fort Worth Water invested significant time and resources in developing two new public-facing dashboards that translate complex system activity into clear, actionable insight for customers. These tools reflect a deliberate shift toward sharing information in ways that help residents understand what is happening across the system and how it may affect them.

Developed entirely in-house by the Utility’s IT Services and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) teams, the dashboards represent a coordinated, Utility-wide effort to connect data, align systems, and present information through a customer-focused lens.

Launched at the beginning of FY2025, the Service Status Map provides customers with real-time insight into the water outages, main breaks, leaks and street restoration projects across Fort Worth.

Fort Worth Water works continuously to repair identified breaks and leaks quickly to minimize overall water loss. The faster our staff repairs them, the less water is lost from our system and the less our customers are inconvenienced. 

Creating the map required integrating multiple internal systems and close collaboration across divisions. The end result provides transparency and useful information for our customers.

The dashboard work continued in early FY2025 with the release of the Service Line Inventory Map, Fort Worth Water’s response to the EPA Lead and Copper Rule regulations requiring notification to customers about the materials used in the service line providing their water service. While public disclosure is now required under the rule, Fort Worth Water’s service line inventory efforts began in 2016, resulting in a comprehensive map of service line materials citywide. Customers can search by address to view service line materials, supporting transparency around public health.

Together, these dashboards demonstrate how data can serve both people and the system—turning complexity into clarity and strengthening trust in the services residents rely on every day.

Using Data to Shape Smarter Water Use

Water is a limited resource, and being good stewards of it means making thoughtful decisions that protect long-term reliability and the investments behind the system. Responsible water management is not only about conservation. It is about caring for infrastructure, managing costs, and reducing unnecessary strain as the city continues to grow.

Beginning in late 2024 and continuing through the summer of 2025, data played an increasingly important role in that effort. By analyzing systemwide water use patterns made possible through the MyH2O program’s remote-read meters, Fort Worth Water gained clearer insight into when and where demand places the greatest stress on infrastructure. This approach is not about monitoring individual behavior. It is about strengthening system health and giving customers the same information used to guide planning and operations. Managing when water is used is just as critical as how much is used, especially during peak demand periods.

Through the MyH2O portal, customers can view their own daily and hourly water use in near real time.

This transparency helps residents and businesses better understand their usage patterns, take ownership of their water use, and make informed decisions that support conservation and long-term cost savings.

Through data analysis, Fort Worth Water identified where targeted action could deliver the greatest systemwide benefit. Irrigation accounts for roughly 30% of overall water use, with significant watering occurring on the wrong days and times identified in the irrigation ordinance. With this insight, outreach and education efforts were focused on achieving compliance with the irrigation ordinance through notifications and fees applied to water bills for repeated violations.

By using data to guide decisions and support informed customer action, this work helps protect system reliability today while preparing for future growth through shared stewardship.

Making Our Water Affordable and Equitable

Affordability and equity remain central to how Fort Worth Water plans, invests, and sets rates. In FY2025, the Utility performed its annual review of water and wastewater rates with a focus on balancing costs, fairness, and long-term system sustainability.

Fort Worth Water regularly pursues low-cost capital financing strategies, including grants, principal forgiveness loans, and low-interest funding, while closely managing operations and maintenance expenses. These efforts help reduce financial pressure on customers while supporting needed capital investments.

Equity in rate setting means ensuring costs are fairly distributed across all customer classes – residential, commercial, industrial, and irrigation – based on the actual costs to serve each class. To support transparency, the Utility’s Retail Rate Structure Stakeholders Group meets multiple times each year to review rate impacts and provide input from a range of customer perspectives.

The result this year was a 3.27% increase in systemwide water rates and a 2.25% increase in wastewater rates, effective January 1, 2025.

These small increases equated to a $1.71 monthly increase for an average residential user. To monitor affordability, the Utility regularly benchmarks average residential bills using the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s metric comparing the annual water and wastewater bills as a percentage of median household income using a scale of 0% (most affordable) to 6% (least affordable). For 2025, Fort Worth’s rate affordability was 1.14%, placing the city at the affordable end of the range. This reflects ongoing efforts to manage costs responsibly while continuing to invest in critical infrastructure and meet all operational and regulatory requirements.

Rate Increase History

Rates paid by our customers are the Utility’s largest source of revenue and support everything from daily operations to critical infrastructure investments. Rates are based on the cost to provide water and wastewater services and are developed annually using industry standards.

With increased costs for raw water, contracted wastewater treatment, infrastructure improvements and employee expenses, rates increased on January 1, 2025. This was only the second rate increase for water and sewer service since 2020.

Reducing Water Loss and Strengthening Our System

Fort Worth Water continues to make steady progress in reducing water loss and improving system reliability. Real water losses have declined from 69 gallons per connection per day in 2020 to 48 gallons in 2025, reflecting measurable improvement in how leaks are identified and addressed. The Utility’s Infrastructure Leakage Index has also steadily improved over the same period, demonstrating stronger overall system performance. Because most water loss results from leaks and main breaks, quickly identifying and repairing these issues remains a critical focus.

Each year, the Utility completes a water loss audit following AWWA guidelines, supported by a five-year management plan. Staff uses a range of tools to locate and measure leaks, including acoustic sensors, district metered areas, SCADA distribution system monitoring, and advanced metering to detect continuous usage. In FY2025, crews surveyed 1,496 miles of pipe and repaired 226 leaks, saving an estimated 46 million gallons of water.

Looking ahead, efforts continue to replace aging cast-iron water lines, which still account for more than 700 miles of the system. 

Additional staff, equipment, and district metered areas are planned to strengthen proactive leak detection. Focus will also expand to unmetered fire line connections, which may contribute to water loss.

Sanitary sewer overflows have declined from 143 in 2020 to 70 in 2025. The Utility invests an average of $140 million annually in sewer rehabilitation and replacement, along with $2.5 million each year for interceptor condition assessments. In FY2025, field staff inspected 340 miles of sewer lines, smoke-tested 115 miles, inspected more than 900 manholes, and deployed more than 60 flow meters to monitor system performance.

In addition, major improvement projects tied to the Utility’s agreement with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality are moving forward, with a renewed long-term plan to reduce I&I scheduled for submission in 2027.

The goals remain straightforward: reduce leaks, protect water resources, and keep the system running reliably for the community it serves.

Water Audit Snapshot

Building Capacity for a Growing North Fort Worth

North Fort Worth has experienced rapid growth, and that trend is continuing. The Eagle Mountain Water Treatment Plant has worked to keep pace with increased demand.

Because this is where much of the city’s growth is occurring, Eagle Mountain was the clear choice for expansion. The project will add 35 million gallons per day of treatment capacity, enabling Fort Worth Water to better serve customers who live and work in the area while preparing for the next decade and beyond.

The plant expansion is closely tied to a series of planned improvements to transmission mains, storage tanks and pumping stations that move water throughout the northern zones. These projects are designed to increase the amount of water delivered to the north side and create critical redundant feeds from the Holly Water Treatment Plants and their pressure planes. Adding these alternate paths strengthen system reliability and reduce the risk that a single main break, outage or equipment issue could interrupt service to customers.

Long-term planning has guided these investments. Population projections for the next 20 years were developed through the Utility’s Northside Water Master Plan. Most new demand is residential, but commercial and industrial activity is also increasing, all of which contributes to higher water use that the system must be ready to serve. The total investment for the Eagle Mountain expansion and related improvements is estimated at $486 million.

Together, strategic infrastructure investments and wise water use will help Fort Worth Water continue providing reliable service to the growing north side for many years to come.

To learn more about a project, use the search bar at the top right of the page and enter the listed CPN.

Antony Odongo

Senior IT Programmer/Analyst Antony Odongo has played a pivotal role at Fort Worth Water. Antony currently works with Water and Sewer IT Services. He started as an intern in 2006 as the Utility’s GIS implementation began and helped convert paper maps and drawings to GIS. He also maps water and wastewater assets for the Field Operations division.

Antony loves how each project he works on requires a creative approach to understand and address. He’s most proud of his recent work analyzing neighborhoods with multiple occurrences of lead and galvanized pipes. To help seek grant funding, Antony compared affected neighborhoods to factors like property age, occupant type by age, disability, income, and others. His work created the service line inventory map, which supports transparency and public health.

Antony and his team have also begun creating maps, charts, graphs, and more to better communicate their findings. His work has helped lead to the creation of internal and public-facing dashboards that allow users to track changes, visualize trends, and summarize findings all while providing near real-time information for ongoing projects.

When Antony is not working, he likes to spend time outdoors camping, taking trips to state parks or simply going for walks. He says the natural environment helps keep his data-driven mind at peace.