Complex state water data, made personal for every Texan
Complex state water data, made personal for every Texan
Creative direction: Drew Lyon
Project management: Jessie Ferris
Content strategist: Jessica McDaniel
Lead designer: Marian Brchan
Overview
Background
Texas Water Foundation (TWF) is a nonprofit focused on water security across Texas. As part of a statewide public education effort called the Statewide Water Awareness Campaign (SWAC), TWF needed a campaign site to help everyday Texans understand where their water comes from and why it matters.
Problem
TWF needed a site built from scratch with no existing web presence, no legacy content. The core challenge was data: Texas water infrastructure is organized across 16 Regional Water Planning Areas, with supply and demand projections maintained at the county level by the Texas Water Development Board (TWDB). That government-held data had to feel personally relevant to any individual Texan who landed on the page.
Solution
We built a custom WordPress site anchored by a ZIP code lookup as the primary call to action. A user enters their ZIP code, which maps to their county and one of 16 Regional Water Planning Group pages, surfacing a personalized snapshot of local water supply and demand data alongside regional solutions. The site launched in English and Spanish via WPML, with a /es/ URL structure and hreflang tagging.
Built to grow with a multi-year campaign
The ZIP code lookup looks simple, but required real data architecture work. Texas water data lives at the county level, not the ZIP code level, and ZIP codes frequently span multiple counties. To keep load times fast, we pre-processed four CSV data sets from the Texas State Water Plan (supply, demand, needs, strategies) and built custom database tables that map ZIP codes to counties to planning areas at import, not at runtime. The data logic also had to clear a high bar: TWDB’s formal sign-off was required before launch, and their team reviewed the supply and demand calculation methodology before we went live. Coordinating that three-party approval process — GLIDE, TWF, and TWDB — was built into the project timeline from the start.
SWAC is a years-long effort, and TWF needed a site that could keep up without coming back to us every time the campaign evolved. We built the site so their team can publish new regional content, add stories, and expand the toolkit pages on their own. As the campaign grows and new phases launch, the site grows with it — without new development work or added cost.
