Ennis officials hear $200M-plus utility master plan as water, sewer near capacity

Consultants presented an updated water and sewer master plan at the Ennis City Commission meeting on Sept. 17, warning that the city’s core treatment and collection systems are approaching operational limits and identifying more than $190 million in candidate capital projects.

"On that master plan, there are over $93,000,000 of water infrastructure projects and over 106,000,000 of sanitary sewer infrastructure projects," Jeremy, a consultant from Shawarmigan Polk Engineering, said in the presentation. He summarized priorities by regulatory need and operational criticality and said the water-treatment plant’s current capacity is 9.1 million gallons per day (MGD).

The plan sets a near-term goal of taking the treatment plant to 12 MGD by 2026 and a longer-term target of roughly 17.6 MGD by 2030. "The intention is to achieve that 12 MGD benchmark by the end of 2026 and achieve 17.6 by the end of 2030," Jeremy said. He described priority-1 projects focusing on plant work and priority-2 projects that upgrade line segments or localized components.

Public Works Director Ed Green outlined the distribution and collection constraints that prompted many of those recommendations. Green said crews recorded 184 repaired service lines and 281 main-line breaks last year and that lift-station failures drove repeated budget amendments. "We've neglected our lift stations in the past trying to save money and we had to kind of catch up this year because we were starting to have excessive amounts of overflows on a very regular basis," Green said, and he described a planned Liska force-main upsizing and other bond-funded lift-station work.

Green walked commissioners through basin-level bottlenecks: the Liska Basin is running near capacity and a long force main requires upsizing to reduce head and leakage; the Sonoma Lift Station will need roughly $10 million in upgrades to handle projected growth. He recommended a mix of bond issuances of about $20 million each and developer contributions where growth requires localized upgrades.

Jeremy and Green also noted regulatory triggers. Jeremy said that when a system reaches about 85% of capacity, TCEQ expects cities to file planning reports and can be collaborative on schedules and funding if cities show an active plan. "When you start seeing that you don't have 200 gallons a minute of water stored per service connection in your city, you're liable to find yourself having boil-water notices or running out of water," he said.

Commissioners asked follow-up questions about funding and permitting. Staff said the full master plan is available for review and that the city anticipates using bond issuances, targeted capital projects and possible developer contributions to manage both plant and collection investments. The presentation concluded with staff noting options for a work session to dig into source-water questions and bond timing.

Next steps: the master plan will be used to guide budgeting and potential bond planning and staff offered to schedule a work session to examine raw-water, reuse and financing options in greater detail.