The Brownwood City Council took a big step on Tuesday to move forward with a plan to treat and reuse the city’s wastewater to help extend the life of the city’s water supply. The council unanimously approved entering into a professional services agreement with Hearn Engineering for a preliminary design of a new water treatment facility.
The proposed facility would treat water after it has already been treated by the city’s wastewater treatment plant and re-circulate it back into Brownwood’s water system instead of releasing it as is done currently. The cost of the engineering study will be $230,000.
Some concern was expressed about an increase in future water rates to pay for the estimated $6-$8 million treatment facility, and city officials share the concern, but also have a greater concern for the future scarcity of water due to current drought conditions.
“What we understand is that we have about a year and a half of water left in the lake. This project starting today will take us one year to be complete,” said Brownwood City Manager Bobby Rountree. “We share the concern about the cost. I can assure you that water in the state of Texas is going to cost more as time goes by. The 2012 state water plan that’s been reviewed and completed here just recently goes directly to the heart of that and also states that the state is growing at such a rapid rate it could be an economic catastrophe for the state if there is not enough water for us to continue with the state’s operation. We want to do what is right for the citizens of Brownwood. “
City of Brownwood Director of Finance Walter Middleton echoed these comments and didn’t pull any punches when it came to future costs of water.
“I think what I want to make clear and that we all need to get our arms around, and not just here in this room but across the county, is that the cost of water is going up. I think that is also true statewide,” Middleton said. “The question becomes, is it more expensive to have higher cost of water or is it more expensive to run out of water, and obviously I think that there is a fairly simple answer to that question.”
Middleton contrasted having a rate increase to pay for the treatment facility to extend the life of the local water supply and the impact to the local economy if it is not addressed.
“If we have higher costs, at least we can keep functioning,” Middleton said. “It’s going to cost us a little more and it is going to cost everyone in the state a little more, but if we don’t have water and if we run out of water, what does that cost us; what happens to our industries, to the jobs that are out there, to our homes. We can’t let that happen obviously.”
Rountree said that the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has pledged to work with Brownwood on the project.
“TCEQ has committed to working with the city’s proposed timeline and providing an expedited preliminary design review on all submittals,” Rountree said. “They also suggest establishing a meeting every two weeks between TCEQ officials and city staff.”
Brownwood’s Director of Utilities David Harris also outlined the goals of the project to the city council to help extend the life of the local water supply.
“Our goal is to get a million and a half gallons of potable drinking water to use per day which is roughly one-third of our annual running average for the last three or four years. It would help drastically,” Harris said. “It gives us a secondary source. This will give us a redundancy in our town. This gives us an insurance policy that we have some sort of water supply coming in.”
Harris also addressed the quality of the water that will be supplied from not only the existing system, but through the proposed system as well.
“The water right now coming out of our wastewater treatment plant almost meets all of the federal drinking water standards right now, it’s that good,” Harris said. “I am not worried about the quality of the water. Me and the engineers are going to fight over who gets to take the first drink because we are that confident in it.”
Harris also showed a video on the ultrafiltration component of the proposed system that would be used if it is ultimately approved.
“It should remove basically everything. It should remove basically almost all known constituents; it’s at the molecular level where everything bigger than a water molecule is stripped off,” Harris said.
Rountree pointed out that this is just one of the first steps in the process of constructing a water treatment facility and that the plan could be abandoned at any time along the way if significant rainfall were to fill up Lake Brownwood. He also pointed out the US Seasonal Drought Outlook that was recently released showing the drought conditions to persist or intensify across the state.
“The precipitation required to end the current drought conditions in six months would be between 12 and 24 inches,” Rountree said. “We know that lake could fill up in one night if we had a huge rain.”
If the plan for the new facility moves forward, officials anticipate it to be up and running by February 1st 2013. Rountree said that he will keep the council updated on the progress of the project. The city council will have to approve putting the project out for bid after the engineering is complete and bond money is secured to fund the project.
