Infrastructure affecting development
HUTTO — The city may not have enough water infrastructure to supply its demands by 2028, prompting officials to consider several options now to keep faucets flowing.
Those include more pipelines, conservation measures, leak detection and water-tower renovations.
City Council recently began denying water supply requests from developers building outside the city’s water service area.
“I think we need to be a little more choosy in what we’re doing. At some point, if we don’t get additional pipeline, this city will run out of water,” said Mayor Mike Snyder.
Hutto has contracts in place to supply additional water, but the existing infrastructure currently cannot handle expected peak demands of more than 6 million gallons per day, or mgd.
“We are trending below what 2028 needs. We’re still below some of the targets in the master plan,” said Adam Friedman, a partner with Austin legal firm McElroy, Sullivan, Miller & Weber LLP. The firm specializes in environmental litigation and is now acting as special counsel to the city.
At the March 6 council meeting, Friedman said Recharge Water LP was on schedule to begin delivery of additional water to Hutto’s Shiloh Pump Station by February 2026. The city signed a contract with Recharge Water in September 2023 to provide 4 million mgd.
The city has a normal production capacity of 4 million gallons a day through a combination of ground wells and wholesale water purchases from Taylor and Manville Water Supply Corp.
Public Works Director Rick Coronado said the city has sometimes used 3 to 4 mgd in peak times during summer.
The city’s existing water pipeline distribution and transmission system has the capacity to deliver 6 mgd, regardless of the amount of water being received from Recharge Water or other sources.
That limits how much the city can deliver to residents and businesses, officials said.
“We’re getting a source of 4 million gallons a day but we’re not adding 4 million gallons a day to the current city system because we don’t have the capacity to do that with our pipeline,” said Councilman Dan Thornton.
Coronado told the council that conservation efforts would be crucial to making sure everyone had access to the water they need.
“At the same time, we have to continue efforts on leak detection, and making sure water loss is kept down and doing the ‘good steward’ things to ensure our water resources are extended into the future,” he said.
Many of the city’s capitalimprovement projects revolve around water infrastructure, including ways to move more water around town to where it’s needed. Water towers are also being renovated and expanded to increase local water supply during peak times and improve water pressure.
Coronado said the added water supply from Recharge Water will give the city time to do necessary maintenance to the existing system of wells and potentially improve their performance. And building a second pipeline is definitely on the table.
One of the items Friedman covered with city representatives was a water-reservation agreement with EPCOR NR Holdings, which is part of a strategy to bring on more water with a separate pipeline and separate connection to the system.
The discussion was held in executive session so no additional information is available at this time.
“We don’t have an infinite supply of water. There (are) limitations to how much you can actually get here with all the agreements we currently have. We just sometimes grow, grow, grow, build, build, build,” Snyder said.
