Mystery leak still a mystery
HUTTO – Howard Norman Elementary School is sitting on top of a mystery. In late 2022, the school noticed a significant increase in water consumption, suggesting a large leak between the water main and the school meter.
“We track our water and sewer bills. The volume increase was a pretty good sign, but we couldn’t find where the leak was occuring,” said Henry Gideon, assistant superintendent of operations. “There was no surface leaking or flooding, no ground heaving.”
The choice between digging up the entire line or simply building a new one came down to money, and it was more affordable to build a new line. They built a new line starting 30 feet back from the school, all the way to the street. It seemed to fix the problem, according to Gideon, but in April the bills starting going up exponentially again.
“At the building when you turned the valves off, you could hear the water flowing. But it wasn’t daylighting. I thought perhaps somewhere under the ground water was seeping down and hitting some type of formation where it was draining but we could never find any location for that,” Gideon said.
The district went back and added the last 30 feet of pipe to bring it all the way to the building, so it’s completely new from the main to the meter. That fixed the problem.
As Gideon described what was done at a board of trustees meeting, one of the board members mentioned that when they were developing the school, test wells were done to evaluate the possibility for a geothermal mechanical system.
Mystery solved? “I think one of those test wells might have broken something geologically below the surface. I’ve seen something like that before,” Gideon said. “However, since we’ve made the repairs already, we cant say definitively that’s what happened. We abandoned the old main, built a new main, did the tests and now everything is working corectly.”
Kinsey’s last meeting
Hutto City Council member Krystal Kinsey attended her last city council meeting via internet June 15. Kinsey resigned her seat due to moving out of Hutto. New Council Member Dana Wilcott will take Kinsey’s place on the dais for the first time at the July 6 meeting.
Council member Dan Thornton lauded Kinsey’s dedication to improving Public Improvement District agreements.
“One thing I think I have picked up from you is a healthy skepticism of PIDs and their actual benefit to the community, so hopefully we can continue to work those going forward and make sure that we get developments that actually benefit the citizens to the extent possible,” Thornton said. “That’s something you worked for from the time you got here.”
Prewitt condemnation settlement City Council returned from executive session on June 15 to authorize a settlement related to pending legal issues for the Prewitt property and the Mager Lane project. The settlement resolves a Hutto vs Prewitt condemnation action.
They voted 6-0 to approve the agreement recommended by the city’s legal advisor and authorized City Manager James Earp to enter into a settlement agreement not to exceed $180,683.
