HUTTO — A recent move by City Council could eliminate the need for one of the eight current private wastewater treatment plant applications and pave the way for the city to serve other developments west of town. Council members voted May 16 to move up a couple of projects that are included in the wastewater master plan for future construction and were not yet funded.
“We’ve been consistently telling our citizens and those in the surrounding areas that we are not in favor of package plants, so if we have a way to avoid one of those, put it into our plan, shuffle some things around and carry the cost a little bit I think that’s worth the cost,” said Mayor Pro Tem Peter Gordon.
The projects, known as Avery Lake Interceptor Phase I and Avery Lake Interceptor Phase II, are included in the 2022 wastewater master plan. They would extend the city’s wastewater collection system to the area west of Texas 130.
According to city documents, city staff had previously worked with Pearl Estates, Hutto Crossing Industrial, formerly TexMix, and some landowners in the area to come up with a plan for how to achieve service to the area.
“We were preliminarily talking to them last year about possibly getting service from the city, so we worked with their team as well as another team to come up with kind of a plan and we even included a bunch of the other land owners who were in-between to see how we could make that all happen. Unfortunately, when the price tag came in the developer wasn’t able to foot that bill. And because we didn’t have it in our Capital Improvement Projects we weren’t able to foot the bill either,” said City Engineer Matt Rector.
Like a growing number of other developers, Pearl Estates found it more economically viable to construct a wastewater package plant to serve their project, rather than pay the full price to connect to the city’s system or wait for Hutto to build infrastructure that was not in the funding plans for several years.
The Avery Lake Interceptor projects, which would serve the aforesaid developments, are not funded in the city’s 2023-2027 CIP or the 2024-2028 CIP lists. With council’s recent vote, the projects will be added to the current list and staff can begin the process of finding a way to fund them.
“So, it’s kind of a lengthy run, there’s a lot of crossings to get across Highway 79, you gotta cross the rails, you gotta cross Highway 130. it’s not cheap. It’s not easy,” Rector said.
The engineer explained the two projects would extend the wastewater infrastructure to serve the Pearl Estates, the land between the Pearl Estates and Highway 79, the Hutto Independent School District land where they plan to build the third Hutto High School, the Avery family properties that are south of the HISD land and the TexMix site before connecting into the city’s existing sewer lines.
Avery Lake Interceptor Phase 1 adds 9,100 linear feet of gravity sewer main lines and provides capacity for future developments in the Brushy Creek basin. It is expected to cost $11,043,000 and take 30 months to design and construct.
Phase 2 adds 8,000 linear feet of gravity sewer main and is priced at $7,444,000 with a total project duration of 24 months.
Rector said he spoke to the developers again and that they would be willing to pay their pro-rata share of the cost if the city would move up the project. In his estimation that would come to about 18% of the total cost, leaving Hutto to pay 81%.
Rector had several suggestions for how to fund the projects now that they are on the list of current capital improvements. One, involving postponing a project to remove iron from the city’s drinking water, met with some resistance from council.
“The number one complaint from water customers is that school colors are coming out of the faucets. We don’t want rustcolored water. That is a quality of life issue for a lot of people and that is the one thing in all this money that was going to help the current residents versus paying for an expanded system,” said Council Member Dan Thornton.
In the end, council agreed to accelerate the two wastewater line expansion projects and directed staff to come up with different suggestions for funding.
“I think the decision for us needs to be initially do we want to add this to the capital improvement projects. If the answer is no, Pearl Estates will move forward with the package plant and there’s nothing we’re going to do to stop it,” said Mayor Mike Snyder. “If we do move it to the CIP that gives us time to figure out other ways to fund it. I think for me the important vote tonight is, ‘what are we going to tell the developers?’ Go forward with a line or go forward with the package plant.”
