06 Mar Saving Water AND Saving Money: A Letter to City Council

March 5, 2014

To the Austin City Council:

We are writing to ask you to defer the commissioning and operation of the new Water Treatment Plant #4 until such time as the plant is required to meet capacity needs. This would create a net savings of about $2 million per year. Deferral of this plant for 5 to 10 years or more would save a considerable amount of money, lowering the bills for people served by the water utility, which already ranks among the higher cost water utilities in the state.

One of the main reasons the plant was built was to provide for new demand.  However, when WTP#4 is scheduled to come online in 2014, Austin would have 335 million gallons per day of capacity. Without it, we have 285 MGD treatment capacity. Yet Austin's peak demand in fiscal year 2013 was only 173 million gallons per day. If water conservation programs and reclaimed water connections were operating at their full potential, Austin's already modest peak would be trimmed much further.

According to the Austin Water Utility's own numbers, the capacity of the plant will not be needed for 17 years at the Utility's current predicted rate of growth. According to information provided by the utility, the plant's net "non-variable" Operation & Maintenance costs (not related to consumption) would be about $2.5 million in 2015.

This would be adjusted upwards by $706,000 for water diversion costs paid to the Lower Colorado River Authority. It would also be adjusted downward by about $1.2 million for estimated electrical savings from supplying more of Austin's water from a higher elevation. (We believe this savings to be highly optimistic, but have left it as is to be conservative.) This would yield the $2 million savings cited above. We suspect the savings will be higher, but this is what we can document at this time.

It may also be possible to minimize or eliminate layoffs resulting from this request. Several of the 25 plant employees for the new plant have not even been hired yet, and the utility's rate of employee turnover is about 85 per year, so many could be transferred to other jobs.

Given that the capacity for this plant is not needed, we are asking you to make the fiscally responsible decision to delay its commissioning. With Austin water rates already among the highest in Texas, and the utility suggesting emergency rate increases, the Austin Water Utility and City Council should focus on saving money and saving our limited water supplies.  

Sincerely,
 

Bill Bunch, SOS Alliance
Brian Rodgers, ChangeAustin.org
Roy Waley, Austin Sierra Club
Paul Robbins, Environmental Activist