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City officials outline Mary Rhodes pipeline repairs, groundwater options as near‑term water strategy
Summary
City staff and consultants told the City Council that the Mary Rhodes pipeline currently supplies more than 70% of the city's water, reported findings of a multi-year condition assessment and described near-term groundwater projects intended to "buy time" while longer-term supplies are developed.
City officials and outside engineers briefed the City Council on the Mary Rhodes pipeline on Aug. 11, saying the 101-mile raw‑water conveyance from Lake Texana to the Owen Stevens Water Treatment Plant remains a central supply but has pressure and debris problems that limited throughput until recent upgrades.
The briefing focused on two work streams: immediate operational fixes and alternative water supplies. Drew Molloy, the city's chief water operating officer, said the pipeline "is supplying more than 70% of our water" and described steps staff and consultants have taken to reduce the risk of further failures while increasing available water.
Their technical team and HDR, the engineering consultant, summarized a multi-step condition assessment that began in 2023 and has included tool runs, limited internal inspections, hydraulic modeling and soil/corrosivity studies. HDR project manager Jerry Snead said the assessment found several clusters where modeled pressures exceed the pipeline's design rating; "pressure exceedance areas increase the risk of Mary Rhodes failure," he told the council.
Nick Winkelman, director of Water Systems, said targeted operational and capital work to date allowed the city to operate at a higher pumping schedule ("schedule 4") this year and to take larger volumes from the Colorado River and Lake Texana. He added that staff have installed additional monitoring (pressure transmitters) and 7 additional combination air/vacuum valves earlier this year to help mitigate transient pressure events.
For new supply the city described two groundwater efforts. The Eastern Well Field (the "N OASIS" program) is already putting raw groundwater into the Nueces River under a TCEQ bed-and-bank approach; Molloy said short-term permitted flows would allow about 13 million gallons per day (MGD) into the river, with a longer-term estimate of roughly 11 MGD of brackish water that could be treated at a future brackish reverse‑osmosis plant. The Western Well Field is in early testing; city staff reported promising preliminary water quality and that additional wells and testing are underway.
Molloy emphasized the difference between "water now" and long-term solutions: "We need water now. This is a water now project," he said of the groundwater-to-river approach. Staff also said several other projects (Evangelina/Evangeline well options, reclaimed water proposals and potential desalination partnerships) are being evaluated in parallel.
Council members pressed staff and HDR on risk scenarios and timelines. HDR said it could not safely run the specialized pipeline tool through the pressure‑exceedance zones without a shut down of the pipe; staff warned some upgrades (notably installation of spare motors and final variable frequency drive connections) also require planned shutdowns. Nick Winkelman said the city has mobilized spare parts and improved pump‑station reliability but acknowledged lead times for large pumps and electrical work.
Using the city's drought model dashboard, staff noted a "level 1" water emergency trigger would occur under the current projection roughly in December 2026 if no additional firm supplies are brought online. Several council members and staff pointed to the Eastern/Western groundwater projects as the most realistic near‑term way to push that deadline out while work continues on other alternatives.
The briefing closed with council direction to continue parallel workstreams: finish wellbeing testing and permitting for the well fields, finalize HDR's condition assessment and capital plan (expected in the weeks following the briefing), and continue preparing the procurement steps needed for pump‑station and cathodic protection upgrades that require limited outages.
Ending: City staff said the city now has more operational tools and monitoring than it did two years ago and that the immediate strategy is to combine repairs, added monitoring, and short‑term groundwater augmentation to reduce the likelihood of a forced curtailment while longer‑term options are developed.
