The city of Bee Cave is working to ensure water preparedness for the summer, city representatives told the City Council on Jan. 9.
City Manager Clint Garza said residents have expressed concern over the city’s water conservation efforts as water levels and availability are affected by sudden changes in weather. Garza said that since the last freeze in February, the city has spent over $1 million to install generators at city pump stations to guarantee power at water plants.
“The disconnect with people is that, when they can’t get water, they think, ‘Oh no, we’re running out of water,’ when it’s really an infrastructure problem,” Council Member Andrea Willott said during the meeting. “The water is there, it’s like the electricity being generated in West Texas, but we have to get it.”
However, while there is little issue with supply during colder months, Jack Creveling, vice president of the West Travis County Public Utility Agency, said warmer temperatures bring new issues. At the beginning of each summer, most residents water their yards regularly, emptying house water tanks and depleting the local supply. In fact, Mayor Kara King said a report from the agency showed that most of the city’s potable water goes toward irrigation, rather than other house use.
Bee Cave is never not under drought conditions, Creveling said, and regularly maintains requirements limiting resident water consumption, including limiting sprinkler use to twice a week. He said the city plans to use a regular and more intensive communication system with residents this summer to prevent rapid depletion of the water supply.
“I don’t think a lot of people realize, and I didn’t really before doing this. I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about water — like I turned my faucet on, the water came out, and that’s all I really thought about it,” King said during the meeting. “Making it really simple, the water’s pumped out of Lake Austin, it’s treated and then it’s stored in tanks, and those tanks are what people are drawing their water from. If everyone turns it on, all at the same time, the tanks go down.”
Richard Scadden, the Bee Cave representative to the Southwestern Travis County Groundwater Conservation District’s Board of Directors, said that while the city has been doing a good job tracking drought conditions, these issues are still growing worse. He offered assistance to the council, if it would need it, concerning groundwater conservation or management.
The council is planning to explore ways to encourage less water use in the city, like more efficient irrigation systems and temporary water meters. There is no timeline known at this time about the possible implementation of these systems.
Council OK’s intersection resolution
The City Council also unanimously gave its support to a resolution to create a partnership between the city and the Texas Department of Transportation to make safety improvements at the intersection of Texas 71 and Hamilton Pool Road.
Garza said he organized a meeting with TxDOT, Lakeway and Travis County officials after a request from King to discuss possible traffic safety improvements in the city. The intersection is the “biggest bottleneck in town,” Garza said, and these improvements would lessen this traffic strain.
The city, through the Economic Development Corporation, would pay for the design of the intersection and TxDOT would fund the construction.
“Relationships are the key to getting anything done, especially with state agencies,” Willott said during the meeting. “We could’ve easily said, ‘It ain’t our problem, talk to TxDOT,’ but we listened to our residents and want to fix it, and the only way to do that is to have these relationships.”
TxDOT and planning consultants estimate it would take about five years for the construction to be complete.
At the next council meeting on Jan. 23, staff plans to bring an Advanced Funding Agreement for final approval.
