KYLE — An update regarding the Alliance Regional Water Authority (ARWA) projects was presented at the March 29 Kyle City Council special meeting.
The contract with ARWA began 17 years ago as a collaboration between the cities of Kyle and San Marcos to bring water from the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer. City of Kyle Mayor Travis Mitchell has previously stated that there is more water in the 10% of the aquifer that the city will have access to than all of the surface lakes in Texas combined.
Graham Moore, executive director of ARWA, presented the information to council, beginning with an update on Segment C — a water line system comprised of four separate sections in the city. According to Moore, the final pipeline of the Carrizo-Wilcox Water Project or Segment C was awarded to McKee Utility Contractors, following a bid process, in 2024, with a notice to proceed April 15, 2024. The project had an initial completion date of Jan. 15, 2025.
“As a result of some requests from the city about trying to expedite things further, we issued an addendum and revised that request schedule to make sure we finished lines one, three and four … by Feb. 28, 2025,” explained Moore. “Unfortunately, we’ve hit a few delays.”
The water at FM 1626 that was initially expected in February has now been delayed to May 5, which is in large part due to NorthPoint easement acquisition, according to Moore.
“How did the decision get made to knowingly delay and continue to pursue various options for easement acquisition, when, obviously, this is the most critical project in city history and the timeliness of it is extremely important, so why did that delay occur without us being able to make a decision as to whether or not that was appropriate,” asked Mitchell.
Allegedly, there was a contact at NorthPoint who stated that the easement acquisition would be done through donation and they were simply waiting on signatures, stated Moore, but it eventually became clear that this was no longer going to be the case, so that’s when ARWA “pulled the trigger to make the financial offer to move that forward,” ultimately closing in October 2024. At this time, the company still believed that the February date was possible, but further tunneling delays occurred after hard soils were found.
Because of these unexpected delays, Mitchell expressed concern that the water may not come on in May, which is the “last minute that we could possibly get it on without having serious interruptions in service going into the summer months.”
As of the meeting, the following information is current for Segment C:
• Line three is complete and tested, with the line installed past Waterstone Crossing
• All tunnels are completed
• Pipe is being threaded through the NorthPoint tunnel
• Interior inspections are underway
• Hydrostatic testing of line one from Maxwell up to SH-21 is underway
Moore noted that the tunnels were the last thing that the company expected possible delays in, so he believes that the May 5 deadline will be met.
Line two is now expected to be completed by Oct. 31: “We did upsize a portion of that line to get across IH-35 based on [an] agreement we had last summer with the city of Kyle,” continued Moore.
“We’ve had some challenges at our water treatment plant, as well,” said the executive director.
According to the presentation, the treatment is set up to remove iron and manganese, conditioning the water to “blend nicely” with existing sources. Though the idea is to remove iron, there has been six to sevens times more than anticipated, which is in turn causing reduced filter run times before backwash. Typically, the run time should be 24-30 hours, but at the highest iron levels, it is only running up to six hours. The increased backwashes then overwhelms the system. Council was informed of this challenge only last month, said council member Bear Heiser, while Moore stated that this discovery was made in November 2024.
An interim solution, said Moore, is to build 15 rented WesTech RapiSand ballasted flocculation units to treat the water by June 30. This solution feels like a waste, noted council member Miguel Zuniga, considering it is only temporary and they will have to buy other things, so it’s beginning to “add up.”
Mitchell confirmed that even if the pipes were completed, because of this iron issue, the city would only have access to one-third of what was promised.
The responsibility lies within the engineer, Moore stated, so the expansion of the project is not being completed by the same engineer that provided inaccurate iron estimates.
“I’ll just speak frankly that, as I think about these new delayed projections for pipeline delivery and water delivery, to me the responsible party for why we’re being so delayed is the director for [ARWA],” Mitchell said. “I feel like we’ve slipped past every deadline that we’ve ever had … I just want to let you know now that that’s the way I see it. The next delayed news is going to be met with some kind of serious action, some kind of vocal frustration.”
“Mayor Mitchell does not speak alone. I’ve been relatively up until this point because my momma taught me that if I didn’t have anything nice to say, to not say anything at all. I hear frustrations from our citizens almost everyday and all I have seen is failure after failure after failure in the delivery of the water that was promised to us. The tolerance for failure is vastly exceeding,” said council member Marc McKinney.
Moore stated that this is understood and that the new goal is on track to be met.
To listen to the discussion, visit bit.ly/3YaHkkY.
