WICHITA FALLS — The idea of turning treated sewage into drinking water may give some people pause.

But with lake levels having officially dropped below 40 percent of capacity on Tuesday, this onetime oil boomtown plans to move ahead with the technology. The city hopes to produce five million gallons of water a day next year with potable-reuse technology, which officials say is safe.

“There was probably a lot of reservations about reuse water projects when we first discussed it in the late ’90s,” Mayor Glenn Barham said. Now, with the drought, he said people have “realized we’ve got to take steps to make our water supply stable.”

The city is one of several in Texas pursuing reuse projects. This spring, a $14 million plant in the West Texas hamlet of Big Spring will begin turning treated wastewater into drinking water and distribute about two million gallons of it daily to the Midland-Odessa area. Brownwood recently received approval from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to build a reuse plant. Abilene and Lubbock are in the early stages of looking at the technology.

“People are paying very, very close attention to what Texas is doing with its potable-reuse initiatives,” said Zachary Dorsey, a spokesman for the WateReuse Association.