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Bastrop council approves talks with Vater on wastewater treatment and reuse
Summary
The Bastrop City Council voted unanimously to enter negotiations with Vater to study and potentially pilot advanced wastewater treatment at the city’s plants. City staff cited upcoming TCEQ discharge limits and a costly outfall modification as reasons to explore the company’s membrane‑free, electrochemical treatment for phased industrial reuse.
The Bastrop City Council on March 24 approved a resolution directing staff to enter negotiations with Vater, a private water‑technology firm, to study the firm’s treatment system as an alternative to a planned $1.8 million outfall modification for wastewater plants 3 and 4.
City Manager Sylvia told council the city faces TCEQ discharge limits that current plant configurations will struggle to meet. "Plants 3 and 4 ... are already going to be out of compliance with TCEQ," she said, and noted the outfall work carried a significant contingency. Council agreed to negotiate terms for pilot testing and engineering analysis before any decision to install full‑scale systems.
Representatives from Vater described a treatment train built around a Faraday reactor and an advanced dissolved‑air flotation unit. "We do not utilize filters, chemicals, and membranes and such," one company representative said, describing what they said were lower recurring operational costs and reduced chemical handling compared with legacy systems. Company leaders emphasized a phased approach: first replacing discharge treatment to meet permit parameters and then, if successful and permitted, pursuing industrial reuse and later broader direct potable reuse (DPR) steps.
Council members pressed on reliability, redundancy and regulatory oversight. Vater said it offers 10‑year service agreements and SLAs with uptime guarantees and that redundant modules and automatic manifolds are part of proposed installations. The city manager stressed that permitting and state oversight would not be waived and that any reuse for drinking water would be a long, public process.
The motion to enter negotiations (resolution R‑2026‑22) passed unanimously. City staff said council will receive more detail at the April 14 meeting on the wastewater‑plant expansion and Vater pilot design.
