Council approves updated Water Forward, Conservation and Drought Contingency plans

On Thursday, City Council approved updates to Austin’s Water Forward Plan and to the related Conservation and Drought Contingency plans.

Water Forward, Austin’s 100-year integrated water resource plan, was first adopted by the city in 2018, after the record-breaking, nearly decadelong drought in Central Texas that ended in 2016. This plan was designed to incorporate five-year updates, with significant stakeholder engagement. The updated plan includes new projections for changes in population, climate trends and streamflow. It builds off of the original plan’s strategies for resiliency with managing Austin’s water supply (the combined storage in lakes Buchanan and Travis).

Some of Water Forward’s strategies fall under the umbrella of reducing overall water use by incentivizing native landscaping and mitigating utility and customer-side water loss; relatedly, Austin Water is nearly finished with its citywide installation of smart residential water meters. The plan also aims to stretch existing water supply to plan for population growth, drought and climate change by expanding water reuse such as the city’s Go Purple Program, which expands our reclaimed water system. It also would explore new water storage options like borrowing space in a neighboring aquifer. Water Forward also identifies longer-term strategies for adding new water supply, like treating salty groundwater until it is safe for use.

Austin’s Drought Contingency and Water Conservation plans, which must be sent to state agencies every five years, were also approved. They were initially updated in May of this year, in order to meet state deadlines. Some stakeholders felt the goals in these plans were not aggressive enough to respond to the anticipated impacts of the climate crisis. As a compromise, Council agreed to work with the Water Forward Task Force to consider additional updates to these two plans alongside the updates to Water Forward.

Along with several other water advocates, Bill Bunch, executive director of the Save Our Springs Alliance, highlighted some criticisms of the plans. Bunch has long been outspoken about his concerns that the utility is investing too much in infrastructural expansion and not placing enough emphasis on the need for individual conservation and more aggressive communitywide goals.

Austin Water “continues to rely overwhelmingly on giant … construction projects. We are not going to have the water to put into expanded treatment plants,” he said during the Council meeting. “We know what to do from our last drought. And that’s to embrace … decentralized conservation and reuse and to challenge our community to … create a culture of conservation.”

Austin Water Director Shay Ralls Roalson referred to the infrastructural projects as “generational investments” and highlighted that the goals laid out in the Conservation Plan were already “stretch goals” for the community.

“We are challenged to rethink how we think about water,” she said. “The next five years are a critical time. … The risk we face in this time is that if we fail to make significant progress towards our goals, our customers may no longer believe that what they do as an individual can make a difference.”

Several members of the dais acknowledged concerns from the advocates, while supporting the updated plans.

“Should we strive to do more? Yes. But I still think today’s vote … is an important update in this process,” Council Member Alison Alter said. She encouraged community members to invite Austin Water to table at events and include conservation resources in their newsletters.

Council Member Ryan Alter authored two motions to bolster the impact of the Water Conservation Plan. One added language specifying that Austin Water would utilize the city’s new residential smart meters to enforce violations on watering restrictions. The other slightly elevated the plan’s goals for reducing community water use.

“This is … taking us to our water conservation target … where we hoped to be today, five years from now,” he said.

Mayor Pro Tem Leslie Pool, who chairs the Austin Water Oversight Committee, said she could not support Alter’s motion to raise conservation goals. She highlighted that the Water and Wastewater Commission, Resource Management Commission and Water Forward Task Force had supported the original revised conservation goals.

“I want to set goals that are achievable because I want to foster public support and trust in our policies,” she said.

Mayor Kirk Watson also voted against the amendment.

Watson authored an additional direction to Austin Water to include a breakdown of residential, industrial and commercial progress toward these goals in their quarterly reports to Council. All three motions were adopted by Council.

The speakers, Council members and Austin Water staff all emphasized that Austin residents would play an important role in the implementation of these plans.

“This is not just on the water utility. … (They) help empower us, but this is on us and this is on the community,” Ryan Alter said.

Director Ralls Roalson highlighted the efforts Austin Water would make to meet these goals, including implementing the findings of a recent external review of Austin Water’s systemwide water loss, promoting conservation incentives and rebates and using residential smart meters to alert customers of high water use.

“This is the most robust Water Conservation plan that we have ever had. … There are no strategies that we are holding in reserve,” she said. “Setting a goal in terms of gallons per capita per day is not especially meaningful to the average Austinite, but what is meaningful is education and incentives that are attractive and actionable so that our customers understand their responsibility. … This is a call to action.”

Photo made available through a Creative Commons license.

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