New One Water Houston website shows how community leadership, conservation, nature-led solutions, and creativity can shape a more equitable water future.
What if Houston planned for drinking water, wastewater, stormwater, flooding, conservation, and reuse as parts of one holistic, connected system?
That is the idea behind One Water Houston, a new website co-created by Bayou City Waterkeeper, National Wildlife Federation, and the One Water Community Cohort to help Houstonians understand a more integrated approach to managing our region’s water.
One Water begins with a simple truth: water does not follow the divisions we have created to manage it. Rain falling on a neighborhood can replenish the landscape, overwhelm a drainage system, carry pollution into a bayou, or be captured and reused. Decisions about drinking water, sewage, flooding, development, and conservation consistently affect one another as well as the communities and ecosystems that depend on them.
However, these systems are often planned and managed separately.
“One Water means finally getting serious about managing all of water together instead of treating stormwater, drinking water, and wastewater like completely separate problems,” said Usman Mahmood of Bayou City Waterkeeper.
One Water offers a different path: coordinating these systems to create solutions that conserve resources, protect natural systems, reduce flooding and pollution, and ensure that every community has access to clean, affordable water.
Building a community vision for Houston’s water
Bayou City Waterkeeper in partnership with National Wildlife Federation helped convene the One Water Community Cohort in 2023 as Houston began exploring its own One Water planning process. Since then, cohort members have engaged the City of Houston and offered recommendations for building equity, environmental resilience, and meaningful community participation into that work.
The cohort brings together community leaders, environmental advocates, researchers, conservation organizations, and water experts from across the Houston region. Its members recognize that integrated water planning cannot be shaped by utilities and technical experts alone. The people most affected by flooding, failing infrastructure, water insecurity, pollution, and decades of underinvestment must have a meaningful role in defining both the problems and the solutions.
For Steph Valdez, Water Justice Community Organizer with the Coalition for Environment, Equity, and Resilience (CEER), these connections are personal. Growing up in Laredo, she experienced water scarcity and concern for the Rio Grande. In the Houston region, she has worked alongside communities confronting flooding, aging infrastructure, sewage overflows, and contamination risks.
“One of the biggest water challenges I’ve faced is living in communities that are repeatedly asked to bear the burden of pollution, flooding, and environmental neglect,” Valdez said.
Her experience is like that of many across the Houston area, and it demonstrates why equity cannot be an addition to water planning after decisions have already been made. Equity must shape which problems receive attention, where resources go, and who has the power to influence the outcome.
The new website grew from that collaboration, offering an accessible introduction to One Water grounded in these shared principles:
- Equity & Justice: We believe that access to clean, affordable water is a fundamental human right. We strive to ensure that all communities, regardless of socioeconomic status or geographic location, have equitable access to water resources.
- Nature-led: We recognize the importance of nature-based solutions in water resource management. We prioritize ecosystem health, biodiversity, and the use and preservation of natural processes to address water challenges.
- Transparency & Accountability: We believe in open and transparent decision-making processes. We are committed to engaging with the public, advocating for access to information on the city’s plan, and holding the city accountable to the implementation of the plan.
- Public Ownership: We believe that water is a public resource and should remain in public ownership of municipalities. We oppose the privatization of water infrastructure, systems, and services.
- Community Education & Empowerment: We believe that informed and empowered communities are essential for effective water management. We seek to educate the public about water-related issues and empower residents to participate in decision-making processes.
- Innovation & Creativity: We embrace innovation and creativity in our approach to water management. We explore new technologies, approaches, and partnerships to improve water efficiency, resilience, and sustainability.
Connecting problems that residents already experience together
Houston’s water systems may be managed separately, but residents often experience those system failures at the same time.
Bridgette Murray, a community leader and Founder/Executive Director for Achieving Community Tasks Successfully, describes how aging infrastructure creates overlapping concerns in older neighborhoods. Residents report sewer backups, water leaks, and questions about water quality. Leaks may continue for days or return after repairs, creating additional financial and health concerns.
Community knowledge also helps reveal where greater coordination could solve problems. Through ACTS’ work with the Healthy Port Communities Coalition, residents identified the need for Port Houston and the City of Houston to work together to redirect dredge-related stormwater away from neighborhood drainage infrastructure.
That is what community ownership looks like in practice: residents identifying how systems intersect, advancing solutions grounded in local experience, and calling on institutions to work across their usual boundaries.
Working with nature, not against it
One Water also asks Houston to reconsider the role of the natural environment in its infrastructure. Prairies, wetlands, forests, and open spaces are not undeveloped land or amenities. These natural areas absorb and hold water, reduce erosion and runoff, filter pollution, provide wildlife habitat, and help protect communities downstream.
Matthew Berg, CEO and Principal Scientist of Simfero, sees these benefits in his own community, where forests and meadows along streams were intentionally preserved as part of its water strategy. The result, he explains, is reduced flood risk, cleaner water, cooler temperatures, less erosion, and habitat that people and wildlife can enjoy.
The website shows examples of how this approach is already taking shape across the Houston region.
The Coastal Prairie Conservancy protects and restores the nearly 20,000-acre Katy Prairie Preserve, including the headwaters of Cypress Creek. By slowing, storing, and filtering stormwater before it reaches developed areas, the preserve functions as regional green infrastructure while supporting wildlife and improving water quality.
At its 30-acre property in Kemah, Galveston Bay Foundation is restoring coastal prairie, freshwater wetlands, saltmarsh, and a living shoreline. The Foundation’s Gessner Center captures all the rainwater that falls on its roof and reuses it to flush toilets. Together with greywater reuse, efficient fixtures, bioswales, permeable pavement, wetlands, and ponds, the site demonstrates how buildings and landscapes can manage water as one system.
One Water solutions are already here
The website also highlights the Harris County Climate Justice Plan, adopted in April 2025 after a community engagement process co-led by CEER that included more than 340 residents. The plan connects clean water, nature-based flood protection, public infrastructure, and environmental justice within a broader shift from reacting to disasters toward preventing harm.
Valdez, who advocated for the plan’s implementation, also points to the Harris County Flood Bond Equity Framework as an example of what becomes possible when public investments account for social vulnerability and historical underinvestment. The framework created a more transparent way to prioritize flood projects and recognize that some communities have faced greater risks with fewer resources for decades.
Bayou City Waterkeeper is advancing similar principles in Northeast Houston. Through research with Stanford University and residents of flood-prone neighborhoods, we have helped document community experiences and co-design nature-based approaches to flooding. Our Green Infrastructure Design Lab equips community members to understand these strategies and advocate for solutions in their own neighborhoods.
These efforts address flood risk by absorbing and holding water, rather than simply moving it more quickly from one community to another.
Taken together, these examples make one thing clear: One Water is not a distant aspiration waiting for a single plan or agency to set it in motion. Houstonians have been advancing its principles all along.
Explore One Water Houston
The launch of One Water Houston is a starting point. The site offers Houstonians a place to learn what integrated water management could mean for the region, hear directly from community leaders, and discover solutions that can be expanded across neighborhoods and watersheds.
As Houston makes major decisions about aging infrastructure, flood resilience, water supply, development, and environmental health, we have an opportunity to move beyond disconnected fixes. A more resilient water future begins by recognizing the relationships among every drop, every block, and every neighbor.
Visit One Water Houston to explore the stories and solutions shaping that future, and share the site to help more Houstonians see what is already possible.
onewaterhou.org was developed in partnership with Evan O’Neil Studio, with communications support from Water Hub.