Waco's struggle to replace aging water system takes time, money

A $9.8 million project to rebuild Fifth Street from Bosque Boulevard to Interstate 35 is set to wrap up this summer after launching in 2020. Replacing old water and sewer lines was a significant part of the cost.

City of Waco employees work on a broken waterline in February 2021 at Sixth Street and Austin Avenue. Dilapidated lines in downtown continue to plague the city water department even after years of renewal projects.

In Waco's historic core, old pipes can be a landmine for street projects, adding unpredictable and sometimes exorbitant costs.

On Webster Avenue, the cost of a 12-inch-deep street rehabilitation in 2020 ballooned by $1.5 million in unplanned construction costs after vibrations from machinery awakened the 40-year-old beast that lay beneath, according to Jim Reed, capital improvement program manager.

A project to repave Webster Avenue saw delays and $1.5 million in extra cost after vibrations from construction equipment weakened aging pipes, which had to be replaced.

Water pipes began to leak in random spots along the street from the vibration, and ultimately had to be ripped up and replaced, extending the project near Magnolia Market at the Silos into 2022.

"In the end we did everything," Reed said. "That was not the original plan."

Waco's aging water infrastructure has been a concern for decades, and the city has invested $204 million in capital improvement funding since 2013 to replace water lines and other necessary equipment.

Waco's water infrastructure is so old that crews have found wooden water pipes in the ground, said water utility spokesperson Jessica Emmett-Sellers. Sellers said many of the most problematic pipes and materials the department is running into now are pre-1945, "and they don't really get more specific than that."

A water crew replaces pipes at 23rd Street and Waco Drive during the winter freeze in February 2021.

As equipment gets older, the cost of deferred maintenance rises. In cases like the Riverside Water Treatment Plant's pump station replacement, completed this past spring, Sellers said the pumps were so old that to do repairs on them meant ordering custom-made parts.

The cost of aging and obsolete pipes is not limited to construction surprises like Webster Avenue. Leaky pipes also cost the city millions of gallons of water per year.

Sellers said Waco is on the lower end of water loss trends in the state, at just 2.4% of total water usage going unaccounted for last year. While the city's water loss has decreased significantly since hitting a peak in 2015 of 18%, or 1.96 billion gallons, hundreds of millions of gallons are still wasted even as water customers continue under Stage 2 drought restrictions.

Reed said aging utilities can limit the scope of street projects the city is able to do. If street crews find utilities installed before 1986 they must rethink the project, boosting the cost from $90 per square yard in a surface rehabilitation project to $290 or more for a full replacement, he said.

A $9.8 million project to rebuild Fifth Street from Bosque Boulevard to Interstate 35 is set to wrap up this summer after launching in 2020. Replacing old water and sewer lines was a significant part of the cost.

The streets department is also responsible for patches after utilities crews repair leaks or line blowouts in a street, he said. Often these repairs involve high-pressure distribution lines that can lift pavement and rip out gutters, Reed said.

He said recently the streets department was 120 water line breaks behind, as harsh weather also has an effect on the already stressed pipes.

City officials are guided by the idea that it's less expensive in the long run to invest in pipes when the street is already going to be torn up.

The city also has to worry about construction of new utilities as Waco's population and industrial base grows. Waco has added 14,000 residents from 2010 to 2020. As businesses look to relocate here, they gauge whether the city has the infrastructure and capacity to support their needs, Sellers said.

"You know, they’re looking at, is our infrastructure able to handle their business?" she said. "We have had a number of new large things come into town and wherever those are, we’re putting in updated things, new things, new pipes, new pumps to try to make sure that the water continues to flow and serve people as best as possible."

As more people move to newly developed areas, the water supply has more mouths to feed over a more spread-out area. Waco has more than 1,000 miles of water pipes, Sellers said.

Sellers pointed to Waco's expansion along U.S. Highway 84 as an example of the city's growing infrastructure needs. The city of Waco annexed the corridor in 1998 and has since made significant investments in water and other infrastructure.

"Those houses have popped up so quickly that, you know, that development wouldn't be possible without existing water infrastructure," she said.

Some recently completed CIP projects, according to the city's Building Waco water infrastructure improvements site and Capital Projects Dashboard, include:

Other projects can be viewed at www.waco-texas.com/Government/CIP or at www.waco-texas.com/Departments/Water-Utility-Services/Building-Waco.

The Waco Water Master Plan drafted in 2015 also lists 45 major water system projects and 18 replacements or renewals set to be completed by 2040, the total reaching some $287.5 million without accounting for inflation.

Sellers said weighing maintenance, repairs and replacements with water rate increases is a delicate balance between public reactions and the need for a sustainable budget. The city water utility operates as an "enterprise fund," receiving its revenue from water rates rather than property or sales taxes.

Water rates have increased gradually in recent years to cover operations and maintenance as well as the $204.7 million in capital improvements made over the last decade. Sellers said the increases have been necessary to keep from losing ground.

"Especially in times like now where we’re trying to make improvement and repairs and things like that … if you don't raise the water rate for a long time, what you ultimately end up with is just a functional budget, which would be that maintenance cost," she said. "So all you would be doing is maintaining and putting out fires, right?"

The city of Waco budgeted $29.4 million in the 2022-23 budget for water system improvements, including $6.4 million for a second 72-inch raw water intake at Lake Waco leading to the Dissolved Air Flotation pretreatment plant.

For the 2023-24 budget year, the water department has requested $34 million in capital projects, which await discussion in budget talks this spring and summer.

The city of Waco is setting its sights on the Brazos River as a supplemental water supply in case Lake Waco's level continues to drop this summer. The water would be pumped to the city's Dissolved Air Flotation pretreatment plant at the base of Lake Waco Dam to be cleaned up, then directed to the city's two treatment plants.

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Kourtney David is a Baylor University graduate from Springfield, Missouri. She joined the Tribune-Herald staff in July 2022.

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