By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
City council members recently heard details about an ongoing project to replace more than 40,000 feet of aging water lines in central Del Rio.
Fernando Roman, engineer for the Tetra Tech company, contracted by the city to draft the project design, spoke to council members about the water main replacement during their April 25 meeting.
“For the last 10 years, Del Rio has been replacing water mains. Between 2010 and 2012, we had a project here where we replaced a number of deficient water mains and improved the system. Since then, the city forces have been replacing even more,” Roman told the council.
He said he was pleased to see data from the city that showed the number of water main repairs has been dropping consistently for the past seven years.
“That just goes to the investment that the city is making, the effort that staff makes to fix the water mains, not just to patch them up but to do some replacement really, really shows in that,” he said.
The current project, Roman, said, is the latest chapter in the city’s water line projects investment.
“We have a project that goes from 10th Street to the north of 17th Street, Bedell and the airport, a total of about 42,000 feet of replacement pipe from two, four and six inches. (The current pipe) is galvanized. It’s corroded and they’re breaking. It’s like you just look at them and sometimes you get a broken pipe, with the consequent problems for people who live in the area,” Roman said.
Design for this project is about 60 percent complete, he said.
Roman said the current project will include replacing 43,000 feet of deteriorated water mains and adding 9,000 feet of water pipe to improve the distribution grid.
The geographical limits of the project are Bedell Avenue, Airport Boulevard, 10th Street and 17th Street, he told the council.
The total cost for the project is estimated to cost $9.4 million.
Partial funding for the project is $4.2 million from the Texas Water Development Board, Roman said. He said this funding will allow the city to do a portion of the total line replacement.
Additional funding may include a $500,000 reimbursement grant from the North American Development Bank for the cost of the project design and a construction grant of $2 million to $4 million, also from the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) through the North American Development Bank.
He said the city will have to wait until the design is completed to determine if it will receive the EPA funds. He said the design should be completed in December.
“So out of the $9.4 million (total cost), there is a gap of about $5 million, because you have $4.2 million (from the Texas Water Development Board), and this project, the EPA will do a supplementary funding of anywhere between $2 million and $4 million. We don’t know, and they won’t say until we finish the design, and they officially accept it,” he said.
“So you will have two sources of funding, the Texas Water Development Board and the EPA, through the North American Development Bank,” he added.
Roman said objectives of the project include eliminating deteriorating mains, eliminating dead ends in the grid and improving grid performance.
Roman said construction on the water mains replacements is expected to begin May 2.
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