Environmental Commission recommends inclusion of 15 Austin Water CIP projects in 5‑year plan

The Environmental Commission on July 2, 2025 recommended that Austin Water include 15 capital improvement projects located in the city’s Drinking Water Protection Zone in the utility’s five‑year capital spending plan, citing compliance with Austin Water Financial Policy No. 8. The recommendation passed with six votes in favor and one abstention.

Austin Water staff presented a seven‑page memo summarizing a subset of projects located within the Drinking Water Protection Zone, saying the list is required under Austin Water Financial Policy No. 8. Fred Guo, financial manager for Austin Water, told commissioners the packet lists 15 projects with a combined five‑year spending plan of about $78,000,000; ten are carryovers from the prior CIP cycle and five are new to the plan. A location map in the memo shows the projects’ positions within the protection zone.

The commission’s recommendation includes a request that Austin Water’s 2026 report explicitly reflect any water leak detection or leak‑abatement activities in the Drinking Water Protection Zone. Commissioners asked staff to clarify project start/ construction status, maps with clearer project locations relative to drinking‑water recharge areas, and how the CIP work ties to water‑loss reduction efforts cited in recent audits.

Assistant Director Kevin Crittendon and Financial Division Manager Tina Romero answered technical and process questions during the discussion. Crittendon said the drinking‑water protection zone covers lands that drain to drinking water supplies, including watersheds that contribute to Lake Travis, Lake Austin and the Barton Springs aquifer, and noted parts of Williamson Creek may fall inside the defined zone where it contributes to those resources. Romero pointed commissioners to the city’s Capital Projects Explorer website for more granular status information and said projects with $0 in the near years of the five‑year plan likely have not started construction.

Commissioners pressed for greater clarity about which projects are already under construction versus in preliminary design, and asked Austin Water to include, where relevant, how projects relate to the utility’s broader $2.7 billion proposed capital plan and its leak‑reduction efforts. Commissioner Krueger referenced recent reporting and an audit that found substantial annual water loss and asked how renewal and replacement work in the capital plan addresses that loss; staff replied that waterline renewal and replacement are part of the broader capital program and that transmission projects on the presented list would generally contribute to water‑loss reduction.

The commission adopted motion Environmental Commission 2025‑07‑02 recommending approval of the request to include the listed CIP projects in the Austin Water five‑year capital spending plan, and requested that the 2026 report show leak‑detection or abatement activities in the drinking‑water zone. The motion passed with six votes in favor and one abstention (Commissioner Breimer).