Brittany Kelley
KYLE — Another water source could be coming to the city of Kyle, following a memorandum of understanding (MOU) at the Kyle City Council July 1 meeting.
“Fresh off of our water master plan and our presentation of our water utilities budget, we continue to strive to produce more options for additional water for the city of Kyle and so, what we’re doing tonight is we’re going to be talking about The WaterSECURE Initiative,” said Mike Murphy, director of water utilities for the city.
The project originally came about when a question was posed about whether the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority (GBRA) could come up with a solution to address needs throughout the Central Texas region, said Brian Perkins with GBRA.
“There was enough interest amongst those 25 utilities [spoken with] to allow our board to allocate some reserve funds to start a study. We started the WaterSECURE feasibility study in December [2023] using a firm called Black & Veatch,” said Perkins.
GBRA then surveyed those initially interested and compiled the information to present to staff in spring earlier this year. Now, non-binding MOUs are kicking off the process of getting the water supply, said Perkins.
Nine of these entities have committed, shared Perkins.
“It is a large-scale regional project. It basically affects the entire basin. GBRA has, from the state of Texas, [the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality,] surface water rights that are underutilized that we plan to fuse together to develop this project,” Perkins explained.
Project elements will include: a lower basin infrastructure, off channel reservoir and raw water transmission; a centralized facility that includes a water treatment plant and treated water transmission; mid-basin raw water infrastructure; and development/implementation of aqua storage recovery (ASR).
According to the presentation, GBRA approached the city in fall 2023 regarding the project, which, currently, anticipates that 4.1 million gallons of water per day (MGD) will be available in the year 2034.
Even with this 4.1 MGD, Kyle’s Water Master Plan identifies a deficiency in water supply in the year 2035, said Murphy. So, the city has requested 10 MGD from the GBRA instead.
City manager Bryan Langley stated that when the Water Master Plan was created, all of the water supplies the city has and will have were considered and there were “simply not enough of those other supplies to be able to meet that projected demand.”
The plan, if approved, would be to kick off the project in 2026 with design and move forward with construction, with the infrastructure being completed in 2033-34.
“Once the off channel reservoir is filled, then about two-thirds of the water would be available under the contract and then, once the aqua storage recovery is filled — it takes a little longer to fill that up — another third. So, what that means for the city of Kyle if you’re asking for 10 MGD, which is roughly about 11,200 acre feet, roughly 7,500 acre feet would be available by 2033-2034 timeline, the other 3,700 acre feet would be once that ASR is filled [in] roughly 2040,” Perkins said. “This also allows you to grow into that project, as well.”
In regard to funding, Perkins stated that State Water Implementation Fund for Texas (SWIFT) funding will likely be used for public utility participants, which Kyle is part of.
“We plan to take advantage of some of the legislation that GBRA helped craft to extend that period for 40 years, rather than 30 years for the SWIFT program. The advantage there is it allows you to amortize some of that early debt and not have to raise your rates right away and you can slowly [increase] them, especially since this is going to be an eight to 10 year project to develop, you don’t want to necessarily saddle your current residents with paying for that right away,” Perkins stated.
Council member Lauralee Harris questioned whether the price is comparable to the Alliance Regional Water Authority project, to which Murphy stated that it will be more expensive, since the city will not pay until the water has been received.
Motioning to approve the memorandum of understanding between GBRA and the city, which includes rights, duties and obligations, was council member Robert Rizo. Mayor Pro-tem Bear Heiser seconded the motion. The item passed 6-0. Mayor Travis Mitchell was not in attendance.
“I think it’s great that we’re looking at multiple options and making sure that we have water sources, so when we do have droughts in different parts of the state, it doesn’t affect us so hard as a city,” said Rizo.
Next steps include executing MOUs in July, negotiating contracts in August through February 2026, executing water supply agreements in March 2026, kicking off the design in June 2026, beginning construction in 2028 and delivering the initial water in 2033 or 2034.
