Reclaimed water rule postponed till April

On Thursday, City Council voted to postpone adoption of a long-planned ordinance requiring certain large developments to hook up to the city’s reclaimed water system.

Bill Bunch, executive director of the Save Our Springs Alliance, asked Council not to agree to the delay.

“This has been in the making for several years, based on our Water Forward plan,” Bunch said. “The development community has had plenty of time to prepare and be ready to implement this. Every day that it is postponed means more grandfathering, means literally forever losing our opportunity to save a lot of water on the biggest projects.”

He pointed out that the Highland Lakes saw the least amount of inflow ever, adding that the area’s water supply is in dire stress. He concluded by blaming the Real Estate Council of Austin for any decision to postpone adoption of immediate requirements for projects to use reclaimed water.

When the votes were counted, Council Member Mackenzie Kelly voted no and Council members Alison Alter and Leslie Pool abstained. Council Member Natasha Harper-Madison was absent. Alter told the Austin Monitor she believed staff when they said they would get the job done in March and that she abstained out of respect for them.

In 2018, Council adopted Austin’s 100-year integrated water resource plan, called Water Forward. That plan emphasized conservation and reuse.

More than three years later, Council adopted regulations requiring that large projects implement the Water Forward plan, including expanding the use of reclaimed water. The effective date for new large developments with multifamily components less than 500 feet from a reclaimed water line were granted a variance until Dec. 1, 2023.

However, the city’s Housing Department wrote an affordability statement suggesting that requiring on-site water reuse would increase the costs for multifamily housing projects. In her memo on the subject, Austin Water Director Shay Ralls Roalson argues that these costs could be offset by other amendments the city has already initiated.

Still, Roalson concluded that the ordinance requiring projects with large multifamily components to hook up to the city’s reclaimed water system should be postponed until next year, suggesting Council consider the item at their March 7, 2024, meeting to take effect in April.

Connecting to the city’s reclaimed water line was an issue for a PUD on Lady Bird Lake on Nov. 2, when developers sought to make a change to their plan and eliminate parking but declined to hook up to the nearby reclaimed water line. Council was happy enough with the elimination of the parking requirement as proposed by the developers of the West Parcel of the Hyatt Planned Unit Development at Riverside Drive and South First Street, but several failed to vote for the change because of the water issue.

The PUD needed seven votes to gain final approval, but only six Council members were willing to vote for it. Pool abstained and Council members Alison Alter and Ryan Alter voted no. Because Kelly was off the dais and Harper-Madison was absent, the item will have to come back for third reading. Also, Council Member Vanessa Fuentes expressed hope that the developer would decide to change its plans and hook up to the city’s system, which is less than 500 feet from the project.

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