Water & wastewater PROJECTS The Brushy Creek Regional Utility Authority, Brushy Creek Regional Wastewater System, Cedar Park and Leander all have current and future projects to increase water and wastewater capacity.
Assistant City Manager Sam Roberts said. “We’ve spent years and years planning for that.” Water conservation eorts Teeter’s position is new for the city of Leander and will focus on eorts to manage water usage. Cedar Park and Round Rock ocials suggested Leander hire a conservation specialist, Leander Mayor Christine DeLisle said, because each of those cities has one who has helped them tremendously. “This is all just an eort to get our usage down and manageable and make sure that we are showing our partners in BCRUA that we want to work with them; we want to be responsible; and we take our partner- ship seriously,” she said. Teeter said landscape irrigation is the largest user of water, and roughly one-third of all water that enters the system is wasted. His main initiative is to educate residents, property owners and business owners on how to save water and irrigate more eciently. “It’s just bad scheduling, running stations too long, undetected breaks, blown heads, indirect pres- sure,” he said. “All those things add up to water waste through irrigation, so we’ll be working a lot on trying to teach people how to irrigate better.” In Leander, commercial properties are using more water than residential properties, even though there are more residential water accounts, Ellison said. At the end of July, the city of Leander had 26,726 residen- tial water accounts, 850 commercial accounts and 93 school accounts, according to city data. During a typical summer month, data shows the average commercial customer uses three times as much water as a residential customer. Additionally, more than twice the amount of water is used in the summer compared to the winter, city ocials said. In Cedar Park, single-family homes are the largest users of the water, Roberts said. Looking ahead, the city of Cedar Park is not expecting a lot of new sin- gle-family housing developments, but additional commercial and retail developments are expected. As of July, the city of Cedar Park had 21,861 residen- tial water accounts—each using an average of 9,080 gallons of water per month—and 1,376 commercial accounts, according to city data. Cedar Park is in Stage 2 of its conservation plan, Director of Public Works and Utilities Eric Rauschuber said. The city has been in this stage since 2015, after the last major drought ended. The city chose to remain in that stage because City Council felt it was the “good stewardship thing to do,” Roberts said. Similar to Leander, the city of Cedar Park is work- ing to tackle landscape irrigation, in which most of the water is used. “About 50% of our summer water is used for irri- gation,” Rauschuber said. “So our focus, where we move the needle the fastest, is you focus on the residents following [the watering schedule].” Water and wastewater improvements Cedar Park, Leander and the BCRUA have projects underway to improve and expand water systems. Two BCRUA water projects are under construction: the Deep Water Intake Phase 2 and the Water Treat- ment Plant Phase 1D expansion. The Phase 1D expansion project will add a fourth treatment structure, expanding treatment capacity
6
LEANDER
2243
183A TOLL
183
2
3 ROUND ROCK
BRUSHY CREEK REGIONAL UTILITY AUTHORITY
HUR INDUSTRIAL BLVD.
BCRUA Deep Water Intake Phase 2 This project will construct a permanent raw water intake at a deep location in Lake Travis, oering a more reliable source of water
1
WOODALL DR.
during droughts. Timeline: 2022-27 Cost: $224.8 million Funding source: member cities
1431
BIG SANDY CREEK
CEDAR PARK
ANDERSON MILL RD.
BRUSHY CREEK REGIONAL WASTEWATER SYSTEM Brushy Creek Regional Wastewater System East Plant expansion This project will add 10 mgd of wastewater 3 BCRUA Water Treatment Plant Phase 1D This project will expand treatment capacity from 32.5 mgd to 42 mgd. Timeline: completion by early 2025 Cost: $20 million Funding sources: member cities, Texas Water Development Board SWIFT Loans 2
TRAILS END RD.
5
LIME CREEK RD.
1 4
LAKE TRAVIS
N
CONTINUED FROM 1
treatment capacity at the East Plant. Timeline: completion by summer 2023 Cost: $28.6 million Funding source: member cities
Regional Utility Authority, a partnership among Leander, Cedar Park and Round Rock. Leander also produces water at its local plant, the Sandy Creek Regional Water Plant. In Cedar Park, 75% of water capacity comes from the Cedar Park Water Treatment Plant, and 25% is from the BCRUA. Of the three cities involved in the BCRUA, Leander uses the bulk of that water supply. However, this is because it has a signicantly smaller local plant than both Cedar Park and Round Rock. The BCRUA plant produces 32.5 million gallons per day. According to the governing contract, Leander has about 15.1 mgd available to use, while Cedar Park and Round Rock both have about 8.7 mgd. BecauseSandyCreekproduces10mgd,Leanderhasa combined water capacity of about 25 mgd—well above the city’s average demand of 11.7 mgd from January to July. However, Leander Director of Public Works Gina Ellison said at the end of July and in early August, the city was using 18-19 mgd. “Currently we’re using right around 78% of our treatment capacity, so we’re still doing pretty good,” Ellison said. The city has plans to expand its water treatment capacity in the years to come, increasing capacity to 44 mgd in 2030, according to Leander data. Demand is projected to increase to 23.6 mgd by then. Cedar Park has production capacity of 34.7 mgd and average demand of 14.59 mgd. Current demand peaks reach 28.72 mgd, according to Cedar Park data. By 2031, Cedar Park is projected have a production capacity of 37.2 mgd to meet an average demand of 15.61 mgd, with peaks reaching 30.71 mgd. “We have ample capacity in our water systems for our full build-out of our population in Cedar Park,”
CEDAR PARK
Cedar Park water system resiliency project This project makes the city’s drinking water supply more resilient by adding emergency power generation. Timeline: completion by summer 2023 Cost: $6.1 million Funding source: federal COVID-19 grants
4
LEANDER
Sandy Creek Water Treatment Plant improvements This project includes installing a solids handling system and adding a seventh treatment unit, increasing capacity by 2 mgd. Timeline: May 2023-September 2024 Cost: $18.3 million Funding source: utility bonds 5
Reclaimed water system This project adds reclaimed eorts to the wastewater treatment plant. Timeline: construction beginning in 2023 Cost: $7.8 million Funding sources: federal COVID-19 grants, city, Northline developer, bonds
6
SOURCES: BRUSHY CREEK REGIONAL UTILITY AUTHORITY, CITY OF LEANDER, CITY OF CEDAR PARKCOMMUNITY IMPACT NEWSPAPER
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