Travis County signs up for more reclaimed water

Last week, City Council authorized Austin Water to move forward with an interlocal agreement with Travis County to share the costs of designing and building oversized reclaimed water mains and pipes within the central business district. This will provide service to Travis County’s Civil and Family Court Building at 1700 Guadalupe St. and the Probate Court Building at 200 W. Eighth St.

Commissioner Brigid Shea told the Austin Monitor on Tuesday that she was “thrilled” that the city would be expanding its pipeline to the two court buildings. She said when construction is completed, the purple pipe project would permanently eliminate Travis County’s use of 45 million gallons of a year and save the county a considerable amount of money. Purple is the industrywide color for pipes carrying reclaimed water.

Shea noted that Travis County is already the largest customer for Austin Water’s purple pipe system. “We’ve been working with them since 2018,” she said, and it was that year that Travis County decided to use the reclaimed water in its new court building. “This is one way we can meaningfully address the drought and stretch our water supply,” Shea said, noting that five other county buildings use the purple pipe.

In operating the reclaimed water system, Austin Water takes highly treated wastewater from its treatment plants and provides that water for nonpotable uses to offset demand. In materials provided to Council about the agreement, Austin Water noted that the city was proposing to oversize the reclaimed water mains in order to serve additional properties downtown.

Austin Water Assistant Director Kevin Critendon told the Monitor that the utility is already hiring engineers to work on designing and planning the reclaimed water lines. He said he expects Austin and Travis County to be able to execute an agreement in the next two to three months. He said it will take two to three years to complete the project. Critendon praised Travis County for its dedication to saving water.

He noted that there is a considerable amount of logistical work to be done because the new line traverses Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. The proposed oversized pipe improvements will include approximately 2,750 feet of 16-inch reclaimed water main from the existing 12-inch reclaimed water main at East MLK Boulevard, go along San Antonio Street and east along 18th Street for the civil and family court building. The second line will be approximately 850 feet of 12-inch reclaimed water main from West Seventh Street along Lavaca Street, and east along West Eighth Street.

Critendon said that although the older building, which was once the federal courthouse, does not have the same plumbing as the newer building, it has cooling towers on its roof, which provide “an easy opportunity … to use reclaimed water.”

The estimated cost of construction and design for the reclaimed water mains is $4.4 million. Critendon said the city would pay for 60 percent of the cost and Travis County would pay 40 percent.

Mayor Pro Tem Leslie Pool, who chairs Council’s water committee, called the reuse plan “a critical and really timely component of our Water Forward plan. It’s also a very long time in coming, and I am so very pleased to take this vote here today. It’s been years. I think we first started this work back in 2017. And that speaks to the complexities and the necessary expertise that goes into these conversations and the stakeholders involved and the professional staff at the city’s very diligent efforts to bring us to this point at this Water Forward piece, allows our city not just to keep pace with growth and drought and climate change, but it allows us to stay a step ahead.”

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