LAKEWAY, Texas — Lakeway Municipal Utility District will be able to store more water to meet peak demand this summer after completion of a two-million-gallon water tank and pipeline. The new water tank is scheduled to be ready for use in early June. Voters overwhelmingly approved bond funds for this project in November 2007. The tank is on Lohmans Crossing Road, just south of The Towers near the proposed Tuscan Village. The project includes a 20-inch diameter pipeline on Lohmans Crossing to connect the tank to the District’s system.
Contracts for the tank and pipeline total $1,658,268. Engineering, testing, inspection, architectural treatments, landscaping and project management expenses will bring the cost of the project to about $2.1 million.
The District provides water, wastewater and reuse service to much of the City of Lakeway. The District requires substantial additional storage to provide reliable water supply for drinking water and other household use; landscape irrigation; and fire protection.
“It’s important to have the tank finished and in operation in time to meet our summer demand,” District Board President Tom Rogers said. “Without the new storage, we wouldn’t have sufficient water reserve for fire protection. In a repeat of the summer demands of 2006, we would run out of water on peak-demand days.”
The project began in early January and will be operational by early June; final completion is set for August. Before recommending approval to the Lakeway City Council, the City of Lakeway Zoning and Planning Commission required that the District work with the Building and Development staff on an extensive landscape plan.
The District’s landscape architect, Steve DeGroot, said he has “made plant selections focused on evergreen materials that will attain a mature height to remove the structure from the view of traffic and neighbors on Lohmans Crossing Road. The idea is to achieve a near-complete screening, with the exception of the driveway access point, within five years.” The landscape plan as proposed to the City adds about $48,000 to the project cost. New architectural treatments under consideration by the City will add another $125,000.
The new tank will be connected to the Rolling Green/Twin Hills water tower, which supplies water to all the other District water storage tanks. In effect, this project enlarges the elevated water tower located along Rolling Green, which provides storage for all District customers.
Among seven possibilities, the District conducted an exhaustive process to select a site for the tank. The Board determined that it should be constructed on 1.04 acres of the District’s nearly 83 acres on Lohmans Crossing.
The Lohmans Crossing site uniquely met the project’s technical requirements and saved ratepayers about $1.2 million in construction costs.
Pipeline construction along Lohmans Crossing mostly will be in the right-of-way on the west side, but will be in the southbound sidewalk for a few hundred feet to save oak trees. Some traffic disruption will occur; the District asks for your patience during construction.
