Interview With Mary Kelleher

 

welcome to this episode of the wolf and

the shepherd today

we have with us mary kelleher who is

running for the tarrant regional water

district board

of directors mary we're certainly glad

you could join us today

thanks for having me yeah thanks mary

i'm not going to use your last name

because i actually live in the city of

keller and your last name's really

messing me up when i go to pronounce it

now

first of all can they not come up with a

better acronym for the

tarrant regional water district board of

directors because i'll be honest with

you when the shepherd first mentioned it

i wasn't listening properly and i

thought we were doing a podcast on

waterboarding but can you actually

explain to the listeners

what what it is its function well they

actually do have a

have an acronym and it's just basically

trwd but it's commonly referred to as

the water district

the water district's primary function is

flood control that's what started it all

off was

flooding in downtown fort worth and then

they realized people realized

that the growing population needed we

needed to look

more closely at our future water supply

so that was their

their two primary functions flood

control and water supply

got you so now that you're running for

the water board and we probably should

have started with this but

why don't you tell us a little bit about

yourself

well i've lived in texas for many many

years now i

came here from massachusetts but i got

here as fast as i could

love texas my husband and i have a

working

cattle ranch on the east side of fort

worth we have um

100 acres and we run well

you know actually about 182 acres and we

run about 100 a head of cattle

so you run a hundred head of cattle do

they all have names

some of my favorite ones oh the only the

favorite ones get names

so i i get that so of those hundred

cattle how many have names

oh well i guess about 20. do you have a

favorite cow

yes uh what's the favorite cow's name

her name's princess

princess okay well that that makes total

sense

total sense yeah now i'm not being

speciesist but they all look the same to

me

they do so i don't know how you'd give

them different names no i

i don't either numbers i think well i

think that's

cow number 47 but i think that's the way

most ranchers do they all have

numbers yeah i remember growing up

whenever i was mowing the grass and we

used to have cattle that went

behind the fence there was one cow that

would come up to the fence because they

knew

we would dump the grass clippings back

there his number was 83

and 83 would always come up to the fence

and i could pet him

because he knew hey i'm getting some

grass clippings here but i never named

him

but and i say him it could have been her

yeah i was a kid at the time

i i didn't know samara you the

election's actually coming up on may the

first which is just under three weeks

away and you're running for something

called

an at-large seat can you explain what

that is and the duties associated with

that position

yes it's really interesting because

water is non-partisan

and so it has nothing to do with with

party there's three positions

up for grabs this time and basically

well there's seven people running for

three positions and the top three vote

getters actually get a spot on the board

of directors

so it's kind of interesting you're not

really running against someone you're

just

hoping to get in the top three so

there's

three seats right now open how many

total seats are there

five there's five people on the board

okay so this would be a

big change over then i mean you could

see a majority shift if

three like-minded people got into there

with the two incumbents

sitting there you could actually see a

major shift in this with this election

that's why this one is so important

that's what you're hoping for right

that's what i'm hoping for right now

that makes sense

now you were on the water board before

this is

nothing new for you at all and you were

on the water board from

2013 to 2017. and so basically you're

running for that

same position so you spent four years on

the water board

then you left in 2017. why did you leave

well i left because my term ended okay

but i did run for reelection

but i didn't win and then i tried again

in 2019

didn't win again so i'm hoping the third

time's gonna be the charm

third time's the charm so in 2013 to

2017 was that one full term

four years yes now you did actually

mention mary that you ranch along the

trinity river with your husband

now um back in 2010 the trinity river

actually had a sudden rise

and it flooded a huge chunkier ranch now

can you tell us about that and how it

actually ultimately got you involved in

with the water board

sure it's a day i'll never forget it in

2010

well we're in flood plain we knew that

and it had flooded in the past

but it was very manageable the water

came in slowly

and receded quickly so it wasn't an

issue well in 2010 the water came in

in about 15 minutes 12 are basically our

12 acres that we own

along with a lot of the property that we

lease we were waist high in trinity

river water

and we were my husband and i were

swimming in it trying to

save as many of our sheep as we could

and i mean i

to this day i still have nightmares and

fire ants were clinging to us and we

could feel snakes

rubbing up against us and just to see

their the look on my sheep their eyes

when they went underwater and they never

came back

up the other thing that was horrible was

we stayed under water for about eight

months that water didn't recede

and i called my local elected officials

for help and

no one would help me and i had always

believed that

your public your elected officials were

there to help you

and i found that it was the opposite way

around and it made me mad and made me

start researching

i researched the water district and

learned that the water district is in

charge of how much water is discharged

from the lakes upstream

once i was on the board one of the

engineers actually came out and said

that they release water from the lakes

to protect the property owners around

the lake with no regard to the

other property owners downstream and i'm

happy to say that once i was on the

board

the water district's been able to keep

that river in its banks

since 2015 so we've had no no more

floods since

2015 which is a great thing for all of

us that live along

the trinity river so you say you had

sheep so

basically i could have went in there and

saved the sheep

since i'm the shepherd that's right yeah

because

all you need is a podcast host calling

themselves the shepherd

and i could have fixed all this i wish

you had been there

did you find there was a lack of trust

issue after that with the animals

well they didn't want to go near water

whenever

you know whenever it rained and you know

they did they kind of had post-traumatic

stress

yeah oh that's sad i know i do i

i have a abnormal fear of rain now

because i don't know

if my property's gonna flood and what's

gonna happen right

no that makes total sense so moving on

to

something that's important to a lot of

you're

hopeful constituents now should you be

elected here in tarrant county

is panther island so can you explain

what the panther island economic

development

project is and the problems associated

with it and before you jump into that

i know that i interviewed leila carraway

before and she kind of talked about that

and that was

a little bit ago there's been some

developments and changes in that so can

you

kind of catch us up with what's going on

with that

first of all it's not an it truly is an

economic development

project but it's supposed to be flood

control project and

ironically that's why washington has

stopped giving the

panther island project any federal

funding because they

saw these glossy flyers of economic

development and saw

very little about flood control so

that's what stopped their federal monies

it came about in in the early 2000s when

the corps of engineers recommended that

the levees along the trinity in fort

worth

be raised and that would have cost about

10 million dollars to do that

well i imagine somewhere in a back room

in in fort worth

some of the establishment people came up

with this trinity river vision project

which would be basically

to cut to divert the trinity river and

cut a bypass channel and remove the

levees that had

have protected us from flooding since

1949

and make it into an island kind of like

a a river walk which

the idea is great but but not on the

taxpayers

taxpayers dollar right and so part of

the idea was that

like san antonio riverwalk it was hey

we're gonna have concerts we're gonna

have shops we're gonna have this

beautiful place for you to come down and

do some shopping or whatever so you get

the public behind it and say oh here's

somewhere we can go

and here's a new activity in fort worth

but it was kind of under the guise of

flood control

and that's how the the government money

kind of got

initiated into it right yes exactly and

every major flood control project the

corps of engineers requires of

a feasibility study or kind of like a

cost-benefit analysis

to see if it's worth it back in 2000s

the

um congresswoman kay granger went ahead

and managed to

get the requirement for that study

waived so one was never done on that

prod

on that flood control project and

shortly after money started coming in

congresswoman k granger managed to get

her son

placed as the director of this project

even though he has no experience

in any kind of water project she's not

actually a lawyer

i i don't think that washington's going

to authorize any more money

for panther island be until a

feasibility study would

is completed the federal government

offered 1.5 million dollars to do a

feasibility study

and the water district turned it down

stating that they don't think they need

a feasibility study okay we need to make

a note there

we need to do feasibility studies on

water projects

because if we make 1.5 million dollars

doing that we can just quit doing the

podcast

yeah i actually took the when i was

reading about panther island

i took it literally and thought it was a

kind of tiger king situation

going on but can you let us um well let

the listeners know mary kind of roughly

how far behind this project is and how

outside of the existing budget

just in terms of let people know what uh

maybe insurmountable kind of uh

yes in the in early 2000

instead of raising the levees which

would have cost about 10 million dollars

the panther island project or trinity

river vision project

went ahead in the estimated cost of that

project was 435 million

well fast forward to where we are now

the cost is now

at 1.2 billion dollars

and part of the project involved three

bridges over dry land

one bridge has finally been completed

after six and a half years

of building a simple bridge well it's

not a simple bridge it's a

very uh jd granger wanted a signature

bridge so

that's what he got and the golden gate

bridge took four years to build

and this simple bridge cost six took six

and a half years

to build and not one single panther to

show for it yeah

that's kind of depressing because it

would be kind of cool

if they just had panthers walking around

on this island

i mean that that's kind of what i

picture and of course we talk about

the nickname of fort worth being panther

city and all that but

it would be much cooler like you say

that if there were panthers walking

around

on the island like a panther petting zoo

it would have probably been better use

of the money at this point

yeah yeah think of all the panthers you

could actually

buy for 1.2 billion dollars

that's got to be like what 1.2 million

panthers

yeah i mean they're they're like

10 grand a piece well if you knew that

there's actually more

tigers in captivity in texas

than there are in the whole of the wild

of the world

i didn't know that yeah and so we're not

exaggerating about the panther thing we

actually think it would be a good idea

yeah absolutely could you could you get

a seeing eye panther

i mean we we could help the blind

community and

then just have people show up and adopt

these panthers on this island

and they could be seeing eye panthers

maybe give it a few trial runs at first

and maybe with people who don't have

enough money to hire a lawyer to see

this if it goes wrong

well no we don't want to put our names

on we'll just be silent partners

yeah okay so you made a statement when

you announced you were rerunning for the

board and i hope i've

wrote this down correctly it said i

believe we still need fiscal

responsibility

transparency true flood control and

water supply planning in tarrant county

now what parts of that do you think are

not really being addressed for them

at the moment or haven't been since

situated definitely the fiscal

responsibility

there was a study done an independent

study was done by a corporation called

riveron they're basically they came up

with their

three biggest problems with the panther

island project was

a fiscal responsibility fiscal

management

transparency and then just the

management and the recommendation was to

remove jd granger from that project

because he

it was hurting the project unfortunately

he's still on the project

right so do you think um during the time

you're away from the board that

they actually lost focus during your

absence and

possibly switched to less urgent areas

like the panther island

or were there outside influences

involved do you think that actually

changed

how you left it i kept tabs i keep tabs

on the water district i've kind of

i've turned into a water nerd kind of

and

i really like to um follow the water

district and

it's still too lopsided when i was on

the board it was usually four to one

four to one and now um there is one

one board member who is asking questions

thank god

so that's that's encouraging but it's

still four to one

it's going to take a major shift if

anything's going to come about

positively for the for trwd and the

panther island project

it we have to have a board or a majority

that is willing to ask the tough

questions and actually have

conversations um it's unfortunate to

know that

the majority before i got on the board

there were

over 600 unanimous votes on

agenda items and i mean five people

always coming to the same decision i

mean my husband and i can't decide what

need for dinner

and so walk us through what happens in a

board meeting i mean it

is this something that's open to the

public first of all it is open to the

public but it's

done at nine o'clock in the morning when

most people are working

so it on an average board meeting how

many

members of the public are sitting out

there very few i'm guessing

i look at it as a consumer of water

i mean i look at my water bill and i say

okay city of fort worth sends me a water

bill

i got to pay for water i got to pay for

sewer and for some reason got to pay for

garbage collection

in my water bill and whatever they send

me

is what i'm supposed to pay because i'd

like to keep

water running into my house and nobody

really gets too upset until their water

bill goes up and we're going to go into

that

here in a minute but why is there so

much

disinterestedness in what's going on

with this

other than you know this 9 a.m meeting i

mean can the board turn around and say

hey like city council let's do it at

seven o'clock on a wednesday or

or something like that or is it more

like kind of the term limits like oh we

can't pass

term limits because then we get voted

out of office

so kind of the same thing we don't want

to change our meeting

time because we might actually get some

people to show up and voice their

opinions

the board does not like people coming in

and there is a

com public comment time and they're

given three minutes

and i never saw the hugest stop watch

placed on the wall and they couldn't

wait for the three minutes to be up

because they didn't want to listen to

the people

i managed to get a lot done even being

the minority vote

because people came to me with ideas and

i put them to the board

and we passed such things like people

tube in that trinity river

and it was only tested the recreational

areas

in the trwd areas were only tested once

a month and i asked for it to be tested

weekly so now all recreational areas are

tested weekly

people get have a right to know what

they're getting themselves into when

they get in that river

one fourth of july party i had to

threaten to go to the news

because the e coli levels were so high

that they didn't want to cancel

the event because of you know the money

that it would generate

but they eventually did cancel it but

that's just not right

yeah i i always remember the joke

growing up you know i grew up around

here that

you want to get cancer go catch a fish

out of the trinity river and eat it

because it's so polluted and so

nasty and now you have people floating

around in it

i'm not saying you're gonna get some

kind of disease from that

but that's obviously different than

eating a fish

that you catch out of that river but i

can see

that point of actually wanting to test

that water

you know weekly so to speak definitely

needs to be and

um we also managed to get all of those

results posted on the trwd website

along with um the i was able to get all

of the meetings live streamed

so now they're live streamed if you want

to watch them live or you can go back

and watch them

at a later date so that increases

people's ability to actually see what's

going on at that agency

i i can imagine that would probably be

more interesting than

episode 8 of star wars i i would

actually probably watch one of those

meetings versus

watching episode 8. do they take minutes

in those meetings and they're available

for public record or is that kind of

something which most people don't know

about that they can kind of read what's

going on if they

actually have an interest sure they can

they can read the minutes

i had a couple of issues with them not

putting things into the minutes that

were said no you can't throw that

softball now

so so what happened there with stuff

getting

expunged if i'm using that word

correctly from the minutes

i asked for them to be corrected and and

they were but they would do it again

and usually it was information that i

brought forward that

nobody wanted to talk about so i had to

constantly

review the minutes and then ask to have

them revised

but you as a board member that shouldn't

have been your job right

no that shouldn't have been my job i'm i

didn't know anything about politics when

i first

got involved in this and my first few

board mem

meetings at executive session they

laughed at me

they made fun of me actually the first

couple board meetings i left in tears

because i just uh i didn't know if i

could take it and

my husband said you're strong you get in

there and you fight back

and that's what i did i started fighting

back and

staying in my ground and they tried to

exclude me from

one of the executive sessions because

they didn't want me to hear what they

were talking about

and i refused i sat my my butt in the

chair

and i refused to get up and leave walk

us through

what this executive session is because

i'm kind of confused because i figure

okay well the water boards up there

they're

doing their thing right but now you have

this other executive session

so to speak so walk us through what the

difference is there

during the board meetings we review an

agenda and we

we take votes on the agenda but at their

certain topics that

aren't uh they could be sensitive in

nature that

nobody that the public shouldn't really

hear about

usually lawsuits things like that so

that's what's discussed

in um executive sessions and so who's

involved in the executive session all of

the board members

and then legal counsel for trwd would be

there

and the general manager assistant

general manager

some of the higher up staff would be in

there like myself i'm guessing a lot of

our listeners don't really understand

how much is

really decided at county level how much

influence there is from the state as a

whole and then how much influence there

is maybe federally

does um the whole process take place

without much outside

interference or is it something which

you've always got to take into account

maybe state changes federal changes

all of that is taken into consideration

that this agency is a is a different

agency it's a quasi governmental

agency and part of the problem is

there's no

real agency above them so there's really

a there's a lack of oversight

which allows them to pretty much do

whatever they want as long as they have

a board that's willing right to push

things through

yeah now i mean the recent snowmageddon

thing here in texas highlighted that

the state certainly has some

deficiencies when it comes to dealing

with emergencies

especially with regard to utility

services and here in north taran we had

a

water boil notice for almost a week

because of possible contamination

now can you explain what happened there

and how it maybe could have been avoided

sure the water district actually did an

excellent job during the winter event

basically their role is to provide the

raw

quality raw water which they did where

the problem came in

is we the water district sells that

water

and the treatment facilities that were

treating that water

lost power and they weren't able to

treat it effectively so that's

what ended up having that's why you had

to be

boiling it and had to treat it now i'll

be honest with you i didn't end up

boiling any water i just drank it as

normal because

i grew up in england and like drinking

the water in england i figured there's

nothing

that can contaminate the water here

which will even

rival the water i used to grow up

drinking well and

i grew up drinking out of a water hose

anyway in the

backyard so i figured okay you know

no big deal and i've drank water in

streams and everything else so

i was not worried about it but honestly

the news and everything said don't even

shower in it

i'm thinking really i've got soap all

over myself

why is this gonna yeah yeah why is this

gonna work probably you should have

listened to the warning before you got

in the shower really yeah

well but the shepherd and i were also

trying to lose about 10 pounds of weight

so we figured if we got e coli it might

kind of speed the process yeah that

that did kind of work so uh one thing

that

i've been curious about with uh

especially here in tarrant county

there's been a lot of talk

about the water bills all of a sudden

going up

and this actually happened to me we

you know always pay our bill on time

everything

was basically status quo with the

exception

of last year i messed up my sprinkler

system

and forgot to plug it in and i didn't

run my sprinkler system at

all last year because i'm not lazy but

my water bill went up

and my wife saying why is the water bill

up

we're not doing anything differently and

you say the sprinkler system's broke

spoiler alert i've

just unplugged it and forgot to plug it

back in that's why one running

and then our water bill goes up we go to

the city or the water board or whoever

it is and say

hey what's going on and they actually

came out they said

oh you have a new water meter that's

more accurate

and we said okay so i went to the

little water meter deal opened it up and

realized nope

same water meter they lied and then they

came back and said

oh well no we didn't replace this but

it's still

accurate so what is somebody supposed to

do with something like that

is that a a waterboard kind of deal

where

i could show up at nine in the morning

on this and complain about it or

am i screwed basically you're screwed

the water district has no

jurisdiction over over that although a

lot of people

need don't know and need to know that a

lot of the water that

originates here and is treated is sent

into the trinity river and that water

goes down to richland chambers

and cedar creek and it sets there in the

in those reservoirs

until we need it there's the water

district used as a pipeline about 250

mile

huge pipelines to pipe that water when

we need it

it comes from us but we send it down to

east texas and then

just to pump it back up hill to us so

you can just imagine the electricity

bill

that is associated with having to pump

that water uphill

and you know y'all are we are we're all

paying for that

right and that's another thing that i

really wanted to um

talk about too was the trwd has some

very very talented staff and one of the

engineers there had been

always dreamed of having aquifer storage

recovery

in our area and aquifer storage recovery

is a concept it's basically a well where

let's say we have a lot of rain

uh surplus rain and the water can

actually be injected into that well

where it can be stored underground for

future use so it would be here locally

so it would eliminate the need

to pump it all the way from east texas i

did manage i pushed for that and we did

get a pilot project on the east side of

fort worth so they're they're trying

that now and there's other alternatives

to

piping water and i'd like to see the

water district has such

talented staff i wish they'd kind of

think more out of the box and

use different methods there's too much

dependency on pipelines i think now i

know mary you were a little bit polite

there and you didn't ask the shepherd

why if he hadn't been running

the sprinkler system all summer did he

not notice his entire yard was dead

well that's um partly because like the

lady who works in the office next door

she's got a plan

every time she takes a few days off work

or a week off work

the shepherd is responsible for watering

it and every time she comes back it's

dead

so now she's nicknamed the plant lazarus

because it's had to bring

bought back to life about six times this

year already that is true

and the other benefit of not watering

your grass

is you don't have to mow it as much yeah

and you know how lazy i

am yeah so i figure if i don't water the

grass

i don't have to mow it as much well last

time well actually the only time you

actually watered it is when we had the

snow and you just got a bunch of snow

from outside and put on top of the soil

yes and hoped it would melt and water

the plant yeah that yeah

that didn't work but we weren't sure if

it was dead because of the cold or dead

because the lack of water itself yeah

well the good news is i lost like two or

three

bushes due to that texas snowmageddon

that we had

and now i don't have to worry about

those anymore but i'm

probably certain i'm supposed to take

those dead plants out and get rid of

them but

yeah i'm not going to do that you know

how you get rid of them you just set

fire to them

pour some gas over them set fire to them

you just stand there with water hose and

when it gets too close to the bottom

you just kind of extinguish the fire and

then you get a small hacksaw and just

cut off the bottom of the room yeah but

couldn't i take like one of these fake

ficus trees and just like glue those

leaves

to the plant and make it look like it's

alive yeah

because you know the hoa police are

going to come by and say that's dead

but i could cut those off and just kind

of glue it to there

like tell my kids it's an art project

for school

make them do it because i'm not going to

get out there and do it and then i don't

have to worry about it yeah now have we

ever been

really close in texas to a shortage of

water as such i know we get water

warnings sometimes when we go through

long hot summers but is that really more

precautionary are we ever really that

close to just not having

water as a utility in our long summers

our

aquifers are dangerously low and it is

it is true that we are in danger if we

don't

act proactively you know we're joking

about the your plants dying

it's called xeroscaping where you plant

trees that are native to the area that

are hard to kill but will stay alive

getting back to the aquifers

if you think about it all of these

aquifers have

like straws in them and we're sucking

out water but we're not putting it back

in

and unless we start recharging these

aquifers i don't know what we're going

to do i mean

we will not have enough water if we

don't

keep conserving it and having different

plans on

how to store it when we have when we do

have an abundance of it

one thing that just came to my mind it

you have this ranch out there

are you on well water or are you on

you know city county water

we have a water well okay walk us

through

the difference of well water versus city

water

it's a lot cheaper that's for sure right

i've always heard

that well water has a funny taste

it does have a funny taste and and we

have added

a little bit of bleach goes in into the

water well

to remove some of the smell our water

well used to have we used to be

delicious when i first

moved out there it was wonderful water

but we had another issue that happened

was

a gas well was fracked not too far from

our our water well and it came up

contaminated with high levels of arsenic

you know i don't know what i'm drinking

yeah you weren't trying

trying to secretly get your husband to

drink more of this

arsenic water right

wait we won't hold you to that but i

could see my wife saying yeah

we're going to get well water there's a

lot of arsenic in it but you can survive

now the rest of the family is going to

drink any of this water but if you're

gonna drink water

you're gonna drink the arsenic water i

think she would do that to me

in texas we're exempt from some of the

overbearing communist rules in some

other states like collecting rainwater

right

in texas you are allowed to collect your

own rainwater or is that false

for now you are able to correct to

collect your own rain water but

you know moving forward that everyone's

saying right now that water's the new

gold

and i know that the the government would

love to get their hands in it

to uh control all the water whoever

controls water is going to be the

the top dog yeah because i have a friend

who moved to california from

texas and lived in texas this whole life

till about 10 years

ago and he put out some type of basin to

collect water

and the police were actually called

around and they were going to charge him

but he had to explain look i've only

been here like two months i had no clue

etc but i mean that's well yeah but

let's also look at the fact of his

intelligence to move

from texas to california

it's usually the other way around so

he's the

0.5 of people that actually go the

opposite way

so i'm i'm not going to put too much

countenance into what he's doing yeah

now he can't even use a straw to

actually suck the water up anyways

exactly or or use a plastic bag

from the grocery store to try to collect

the water just as long as it gets

through those 10 disposable masks a day

that's all

yes yeah and it's got to be tough for

him yeah now

so this time around mary do you think

you'll face the same kind of red tape

issues as you had before

or do you think your experience and the

other people on the board knowing

you've had that experience will make

life easier to kind of hit the ground

running this time

i think so i've i've grown a lot when i

came in i was

i had guns ablazing i have to admit that

and i have toned it down a lot and

realized that

i have to play well with others i still

speak my mind

um i think it's important as a board to

discuss everything not just

blanket past things so i think towards

the end of my term we had

pretty good relation i had a good

relationship with most of the board

members so

i think if i get elected again i'm i

will just be able to step in and

and go how can you get more people to

show up for one of these special

elections

you know voter turnout is always a big

deal in politics when and i know this is

a non-political position or non-partisan

i should say

but how do you get people to show up and

say you know what this is important

and the election's on may 1st it's a

saturday

not going to be a lot of people showing

up so it ought to be a pretty short line

how do you get people to get out there

and say look

this is important just study everybody

make your picks and take five minutes

and just

do this on your way to taco bell well i

think what y'all are doing

is helping towards that goal it's a lot

about

giving people more information more

information about

what the water district actually does so

many people don't even know

what it is other than that they pay

taxes to it and they're probably

grateful that it's the lowest

taxing agent on their property tax bill

but i think it's word of mouth and this

snow

that winter event made everybody realize

that water is

so precious that we we can't live

without it and hopefully just

with word of mouth we can educate and

inform about the importance of the water

district

and just general voting how important it

is to

vote i mean i know when we talked about

interviewing you i kept calling you the

waterboard lady

i kept telling the wolf hey we're going

to interview the waterboard lady and he

said

well waterboarding in guantanamo bay

sounds

absolutely fantastic if you don't know

what either of those terms mean

i kind of felt when i first got on the

board that i was being waterboarded

well that's apropos for the waterboard i

mean it that's not a requirement by the

way right when you get in there they

don't waterboard you just to say

hey you're on the water board let's

waterboard you real quick just so you

know what that is

i mean that would be terrible now

although i would like to waterboard the

wolf

i can hold my breath for a long time it

won't work yeah well then we got to find

water yeah all we have is beer yeah we

just have an alien l beer

around here and i'm not going to waste

that on yeah exactly

you want to drink it up my nose um so

i do think that we've you know covered

last year in the initial water shortages

where people buying up all the bottled

water and you know with snowmageddon

this year

people a little bit more cognizant of

the value of water here which i think

they mostly probably ignored

before because we haven't really even in

some of the longest hot

summers here in texas in the last 20

years had too many

kind of warnings people have taken heed

of like i will be careful with border

everybody's still

watering their yards and you know

showering all the time

except for me i don't like doing that

but do you think now that

it might be a little bit more of a

public interest to actually

you know have a little bit more concern

about who's on the board and how much is

practically going to be done i hope so a

lot of people still don't know what the

water district does but

the more information gets out about it i

think the more interested people do

become

the water district is one of the most

important local elections

and i i hope after hearing this podcast

listeners will be more interested in

in the water district election you just

heard just the basic

of what the water district does and i

encourage anyone wanting to know more

about it to contact me

i do answer all emails and phone calls

unlike many other elected officials

i represented the people with pride

honesty and transparency

i asked uncomfortable questions and

encouraged discussion amongst board

members

there's a lot more work that needs to be

done on that board and if i'm elected

i will serve your best interests not the

interests of the establishment

i'd love to hear from you my phone

number

is 817-880-5

or you can find me on facebook just

under mary kelleher

thank you mary thank you very much for

joining us today on the podcast we

certainly appreciate you

taking some time out of your day to

telling everybody

about the water board and how

all of that is important and

thank you listeners for joining us and

we will

catch you on the next one