Mayor Floats Idea of Building Brand New Water Treatment Plant

SAN ANGELO, TX — Replacing the 100-year-old water treatment plant and the City’s plans to sell the Ford Ranch were addressed Tuesday evening at the City of San Angelo’s State of the City address.

Mayor Brenda Gunter, who was critical of the decision of the City of San Angelo Water Department to purchase the Ford Ranch for $43 million during her campaign, said the City has already placed portions of the sprawling ranch stretched across three west Texas counties on the market. Other parts of the ranch will be sold as soon as specific mineral and water rights, and access to well fields, are worked out, she said.

The 32,841-acre ranch was purchased by the City of San Angelo in June 2017 because it sits atop the Hickory Aquifer where the City of San Angelo holds significant groundwater rights. In 2009, the City embarked upon a $121 million project to build wells, a 63-mile pipeline, and a special water treatment plant designed to extract natural radium out of the groundwater. The Hickory’s water treatment plant sits next to the existing plant on the banks of the Concho River at the end of E. Avenue I.

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Above: A screenshot of the Google map with an overlay of the Ford Ranch boundaries. (Screenshot/Google Maps)

Once these legal rights to the City’s groundwater are secured, the City intended to sell the Ford Ranch, as they are beginning to do today, in pieces.

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Above: A battery of City of San Angelo well heads pumping water from the ground at the Ford Ranch to be transported 60 miles north through the pipeline. (Contributed/City of San Angelo)

City Manager Daniel Valenzuela, in his opening remarks last night, noted that the primary water treatment plant for San Angelo was built nearly 100 years ago. Later in the sit-down discussion with City Public Information Officer Anthony Wilson, Mayor Gunter bemoaned the term “potty water.” Opponents of installing a specialized water treatment plant used the term, a “potty water” treatment plant. 

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Above: Outside the circa 1920s water filtration building. (LIVE! Photo/Joe Hyde)

Two years ago, the City pondered building the $150 million water reclamation treatment plant (the official name) that would convert non-potable water to drinking water. Potty water is also referred to as effluent, or non-potable water, and the process of turning into drinking water is called reclamation. The water looks clean to the naked eye, but is not drinkable unless specially treated. (See "The Politics of Potty Water", May 21, 2016).

The City built a $1.5 million pilot treatment water reclamation plant to test those capabilities, but the larger $150 million project was killed by City Council prior to Gunter taking office. The City’s Water Advisory Board, headed by banker Mike Boyd, argued at the time that the City Water Department did not have enough cash reserves to secure the $150 million investment like a business should. City water is a separate business, or enterprise, operated by the government entity, and called an “enterprise.”

Since then, because of a water rate increase in FY 2016, the City Water Department has significantly grown its cash reserves.

With little desire for reopening the water reclamation discussion, in a question and answer period afterward, Mayor Gunter said the City is looking at a complete replacement of the 100-year-old water treatment plant.

“Yes it is a number one priority. We realize it’s [the water treatment plant] 100 years old, we better be doing something soon and fast,” Gunter said.

A new water treatment plant could incorporate the ability to treat effluent water.

Water reclamation can add around 6 to 8 million gallons per day (MGD) to San Angelo’s menu of water source options. The high use for water at current population levels is around 15 MGD. Yesterday, San Angelo used 14.041 MGD.

In Q&A, a separate issue about water reclamation came up, though only those highly steeped in San Angelo water politics noticed.

The general manager of Quicksand Golf Course, Jack Hutchison, asked for access to the effluent water. He is currently proposing to build the required pipelines to tap into the City pipes carrying the effluent water and deliver that water to the Quicksand Golf Course sprinkler system.

Quicksand Golf Course will have to wait in line. Effluent water is valuable. Not only can the City reclaim that water with a future new treatment plant, but also the farmers around Veribest where an irrigation canal system exists and distributes the same effluent water already speak for the water.

The farmers own rights to 25,000 acre-feet of Twin Buttes Reservoir water. In the late 1990s, a deal was struck between the City and the Tom Green County Water Control & Improvement District #1 to give its Twin Buttes water rights to the City in return for use of the effluent water departing the City’s water treatment plant.

Today, the Veribest canal system irrigates 10,000 to 15,000 acres of farmland located east of San Angelo.

The water deal with the Veribest farmers can be renegotiated, but a third party to the deal is the Bureau of Reclamation, a federal government agency.

In previous financial discussions at City Council, City staff informed all that the current cash flow at the water department could finance debt service for a new water treatment facility having a ballpark price of around $150 million. Financing the $44 million Ford Ranch purchase reduced the amount that can be borrowed for a new plant by that amount. Building an entirely new water treatment, not just a separate auxiliary facility, will likely up the price significantly above $150 million. Two years ago, an unofficial number close to $200 million for a new plant with reclamation capabilities was offered as a ballpark figure by the City’s then chief of water Jim Riley. No official estimates, then or now, have been made public.

The cash flow to pay for financing must come from the separate water enterprise fund.

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Above: Magnificent view of City PIO Anthony Wilson and Mayor Brenda Gunter on the stage at the Murphey Performance Hall at City Hall for the State of the City Address on Aug. 7, 2018. (LIVE! Photo/Joe  Hyde)

The new water treatment plant discussion is politically dicey. Many citizens have expressed their concern about the existing level of debt at the City, how high water bills already are, and the safety of water reclamation. The Veribest farmers will have their say too, since currently, they have a deal to use all the effluent from the plant. For now, however, Mayor Gunter is addressing the issue head-on.

“Yes, it is a number one priority,” she said.