By Amira Van Leeuwen
KYLE — On Oct. 18, the Kyle City Council unanimously authorized the issuance of additional contract revenue bonds to allow the Alliance Regional Water Authority to complete the construction of its projects to deliver water to its sponsors.
The city planned to pay four phases of debt issuances, and since funding for the project began in 2017, this year will be the last of Kyle’s debit issuances at about $13.52 million which will bring the total share up to $81.25 million.
“It’s a pretty exciting time for us,” said Graham Moore, executive director of the Alliance Regional Water Authority. “Kyle first started the initial discussions in the region back in 2003, so it’s going to be just over 20 years from the time when some of these initial discussions happened until this water is delivered to the region.”
With the rapid growth, the project aims at bringing a new water supply to the region. Although there are several different pipelines, Alliance Water expects to begin delivering water to Kyle residents at the end of 2024.
During the first phase, Kyle residents will receive about two million gallons of water daily at full flow.
“When I say at full flow, you can expect in times of the summer where we have peak demand and usage, that we'll be providing our full amount, which would be two million gallons per day. If it's in the wintertime, and the city's other sources are able to keep up with how much demand is needed, then we would have less than that, would be the expectation,” Moore said.
Once the wells draw the untreated water out from the ground, Alliance Water will pump it to the water treatment plant and add chemicals.
Then, they will filter the water to another tank, where they will pump it out and push it to its maximal area.
At that point, the pressure from the pipeline is gone, so they have to repressurize the water through their pump system. Alliance Water will then pump the water from there, through the pipelines, and up and into its customers' storage tanks.
In the event of a power outage, Kyle has two different water storage/delivery locations; one is an existing storage tank located at FM 1626, and the other is currently under design but will be located in the southeast part of Kyle.
Then they will dump that water straight into the water tank at one of those locations. From there, Alliance Water’s sponsor systems will ensure that the water is delivered to individual users, homes, businesses, etc.
Located in the eastern part of Caldwell County, the wells have met specific parameters that determine whether the water quality matches and aligns with what the company looks for.
“We’re not the first ones to drill in the area, so we had a pretty good idea of the types of parameters that we would have,” Moore said. “There were no surprises. There wasn’t some other chemical or element in that that showed up.”
Each well pumps anywhere from 600 to 1,200 gallons per minute.
Although Hays County has been in an intense drought, Moore said they do not expect their wells to dry out based on extensive modeling and the history of the aquifer. Moore said they monitor the wellfield and will continue to monitor as they produce.
“If it were to happen, it’s not something that would happen over a short period of time. It’s something that would take, maybe decades,” Moore said.
One challenge Alliance Water faced in its quest to implement this project was the environmental clearance process to ensure it was not impacting any endangered species or coming upon any hazardous material. Alliance Water has also had challenges in some of its water crossings that impacted its schedule.
“We have to basically, kind of dig on either side of those creeks to look to see if there are any artifacts or signs there was some prehistoric life in the area,” Moore said. “It’s just taking considerably longer to go through that review process and get approval for those than what we had estimated it would take.”
