Richardson staff brief council on water model, wastewater maintenance and A25 pressure-zone improvements

City staff presented a multi-faceted update on water and wastewater maintenance, emphasizing a completed water model and planned capital work tied to the city's fiscal planning.

Eric (Director of Public Services) told the council the water-model and master-plan, launched in August 2023, is now calibrated for hydraulic scenarios and will support in-house scenario analyses and capital prioritization. He said Richardson's residential water use is about 86 gallons per capita per day, citing Texas Water Development Board comparisons, and highlighted partnerships with the North Texas Municipal Water District and Texas A&M AgriLife on conservation efforts.

"This water model is calibrated so we can plug in nodes and demands and it'll tell us how the system is going to react," Eric said, noting staff training is planned to reduce reliance on consultants.

On compliance and maintenance, Eric reported progress on the EPA lead-and-copper rule work: staff reduced meters listed as having unknown service-line material from roughly 11,000 to about 2,000 and to date has not found service lines that required replacement under the program. He described annual testing programs for larger meters, an increase to 1,600 hydrant tests per year to align with ISO/fire department needs, and an ongoing meter-replacement and meter-audit program.

Katie (project lead on the A25 improvements) summarized the northwest pressure-zone upgrades: a large Northside pump-station expansion, a 5 million gallon ground storage tank, and waterline improvements intended to improve pressure and capacity. She said the physical construction is largely complete and staff are finalizing systems testing before bringing the system fully online, with the expectation work will be closed out by the end of the fiscal year if testing proceeds as planned.

Staff also described wastewater CMOM (capacity-management, operations and maintenance) work, FY25 and FY26 pipe-rehab sequencing, manhole replacement phases, CCTV/MSI inspection totals and plans to continue condition-assessment data collection to inform future CIP and rate discussions.

Council members asked about coordination with the North Texas Municipal Water District; staff said coordination is ongoing at both project and operations levels. No formal votes were taken; staff flagged water-rate methodology and meter inventories as forthcoming items for the council's budget workshop.