The West Authority was created by the Texas Legislature in 2001 to facilitate the shift from pumping underground well water to surface water supply (water from lakes and rivers) by municipal utility districts (MUDs) in west Harris County, and the City of Katy. When large sections of Harris County – primarily to the north and west of the City of Houston – were directed by the Harris-Galveston Subsidence District to convert to 80 percent surface water supply over the next 20 years, there was no centralized government that could take on the task of negotiating and securing a long term supply of water from the City of Houston or other entities that had surface water to sell. Harris County did not have the right to own, operate and sell water, so it was up to the municipal utility districts to figure out how they would do it on their own. It was a monumental task for the individual MUDs, so four large water authorities – the West Harris County Regional Water Authority, North Harris County Regional Water Authority, Central Harris County Regional Water Authority, and the North Fort Bend Water Authority in Fort Bend County — were created to manage the supply challenge and to design and construct new water delivery systems for their respective areas.