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Water utilities urge phased approach: small systems lack staff, maps and funding for mandatory 811 participation
Summary
Water utilities and rural‑water representatives told the subcommittee that many small water providers lack the staff, electronic maps and funding to meet a mandatory 48‑hour response for 811 locate requests without staged onboarding and subsidies.
Representatives of San Antonio Water System (SAWS), Fort Worth Water Department, Aqua Water Supply Corporation and the Texas Rural Water Association described operational differences between many water utilities and the Class A facility operators that now participate mandatorily in Texas 811.
Blair Parker (SAWS) said SAWS ran a 2019 pilot with Texas 811 that generated about 1,400 daily notification tickets and a backlog of roughly 15,000 tickets in the first week; many tickets covered areas outside SAWS's service area or private property. Parker described SAWS's current approach: an internally operated locate system tailored to service area maps, an internal locate staff (about 31 locators in SAWS's case) and a locate window SAWS aims to meet but that commonly averages 2.98 business days in practice. SAWS recommended a phased timeline for onboarding Class B utilities, a longer standard locate window (3–5 business days rather than 48 hours), and representation for water utilities on the 811 board.
Witnesses from rural water associations and small utilities said most small systems (the majority of Texas water utilities) lack electronic maps, do not have regular business hours, and operate with one or zero full‑time employees—making a mandatory 48‑hour response unrealistic. Mary Alice McNaughton (Texas Rural Water Association) said a back‑of‑envelope estimate for a small utility to join 811 (staffing, equipment and operational costs) could run on the order of $80,000–$160,000 (survey respondents used a wide range), and that for many small systems those costs could mean a substantial rate increase for customers.
Panelists offered technical suggestions: limit ticket scope to reduce excessive notifications (SAWS noted a problematic 300‑foot buffer in the pilot that covered large residential blocks; SAWS prefers a 100‑foot buffer for its service area), allow phased onboarding and software support, and consider targeted grant funding to bring paper maps into basic GIS shapefiles before mandatory participation.
