Maneuvering to provide for future growth, the city of Kyle has signed a deal that greatly expands the amount of water it gets from the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority.
The contract will increase the amount of treated water piped into Kyle from GBRA by 84 percent.
“You know as well as I do that water is key to growth in this corridor,” said James Earp, Kyle’s assistant city manager. “Now we’ve got enough water to handle our additional growth and economic development.”
Under the terms of the contract approved by the City Council last Tuesday, GBRA will provide 4.86 million gallons of water per day, up from the current 2.64 million gallons.
“It’s my understanding this is the last of the Canyon Lake water that is available” from GBRA, Mayor Pro Tem David Wilson said during the council meeting. “This is it. We get it, and there’s other people that want it.”
“This is the last of the cheap water,” Earp replied.
The water is piped from the Guadalupe River to a treatment facility in San Marcos. From there, it flows through a transmission line that runs along the east side of town and beyond to Buda and the Sunfield Municipal Utility District. City officials seemed pleased to lock up the water rights before their competitors could.
“If we didn’t take it, someone else was going to,” Earp said. “Definitely.”
He said the new water will mostly be used on the east side of Kyle. Because the city doesn’t have infrastructure in place to move the water to western areas of town, he added, those areas will continue to use water from the Edwards Aquifer. With the ongoing drought, however, access to aquifer water is ever more tenuous.
“We will continue to use Edwards Aquifer and Barton Springs water,” Earp said. “It gives us room to grow. We can take advantage of GBRA water, and over several years we can plan for additional infrastructure and improvements to maximize it.”
GBRA currently accounts for more than half of the water used by the city of Kyle. In the summertime, the city uses an average of about 3 million gallons to 3.5 million gallons of water a day, Earp said.
The newly acquired water source should provide for Kyle’s needs through 2017, he said, just in time for the city’s next major water project to come online. Between 2018 and 2020, the city is expecting to tap into the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer through the Hays Caldwell Public Utility Agency.
The HCPUA is a collaboration between Kyle, Buda, San Marcos and other entities to pipe in 10 million gallons of water a day by 2018 and another 20 million gallons a day by 2032.
