City plan nearly ready for approval

City plan nearly ready for approval News Staff Wed, 06/19/2024 - 10:03 am X Sage Diller, vice president of Enprotec/Hibbs & Todd, presented the utilities portion of the city of Breckenridge's draft comprehensive plan Tuesday, June 11. Photo/Mike Williams Sage Diller, vice president of Enprotec/Hibbs & Todd, presented the utilities portion of the city of Breckenridge's draft comprehensive plan Tuesday, June 11. Photo/Mike Williams By Mike Williams news@breckenridgeamerican.com The city of Breckenridge is nearing completion on its updated comprehensive plan, with a likely adoption at the July meeting. City commissioners were presented a draft version of the plan during their Tuesday, June 4 meeting for review in preparation for next month’s meeting. Sage Diller, vice president of Enprotec/Hibbs & Todd, presented the utilities portion of the presentation. Ken Coignet, vice president of Public Management Inc., presented the population and housing portions of the comprehensive plan. The recreation and open space portion of the plan was discussed by City Manager Cynthia Northrop in May. Diller said a big problem the city has is the amount of cast-iron water lines that remain in use.The city has been in the process of working on replacing water lines as part of its long-term road repair project that began last year. “One issue we had in the water distribution system (is) there’s still a lot of cast-iron line and there’s leaks out there,” Diller said. “We’re trying to help continue to get funding for the city to replace those. All of those leaks are a burden on your staff and maintenance guys. … It’s costly, it’s time-consuming. The more of those lines we can get out of the system the better and so that’s one of the goals.” Water systemThe plan ranks in order of importance five issues with the water system in the city – these issues are water line replacement and fire hydrant installations needed, rehabilitation of existing elevated and ground storage tanks, water treatment plant upgrades, galvanized and lead service line replacement and emergency power. The city will have five stated objectives it plans to achieve in water system improvements through 2035. Over the next year, the city will continue work on replacing water lines and upgrading the water treatment plant and intake structure. The city estimates the cost of this work to cost $3.6 million and is currently funded by the Texas Water Development Board (TWDB). Hydrants are replaced as needed in conjunction with the water line replacement projects. The city has a water storage capacity of 1.5 million gallons split between three locations. The water treatment plant has a ground storage capacity of 1 million gallons while the east and west water towers each hold 250,000 gallons. Most of the water used comes from ground storage with elevated storage to provide a pressurized water supply during power failures and short-term surges in demand.  Breckenridge currently purchases raw water from West Central Texas Municipal Water District that is delivered to the water treatment plant. Between 2026 and 2028, the city is estimating to use $1.2 million from TWDB, the Texas Department of Agriculture’s Community Development Block Grant Program and United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development to rehabilitate the storage tanks. Beginning next year and extending through 2035, the city is planning to replace galvanized and lead service lines. The estimated $8 million price tag of the project would come from TWDB with 51% coming from a grant and the remaining 49% through a zero-interest loan. With a timetable of 2028 through 2030, and an estimated cost of $2.8 million, the fourth objective is to replace large diameter lines near the east storage tank. This would likely be funded through USDA or TWDB. The fifth objective is to continue to replace the cast-iron distribution lines. The timeline on this objective is 2028 through 2035 at a cost of $7.5 million. This objective would likely be funded through USDA, TWDB, or grants from TDA. WastewaterThis portion of the plan lists four problems — three lift stations have not been rehabilitated recently, the wastewater collection main needs replaced, improvements are needed in the wastewater treatment plant and there is a lack of sufficient emergency power at the water treatment plant, booster pump stations and wastewater lift stations.  The plan states the city has submitted applications for funding through the TWDB to install emergency generators to the system. “The goal of the city’s wastewater system plan is to address aging infrastructure within the collection system, including manholes, collection lines and pump stations and to consistently make improvements to the wastewater treatment plant in order to provide uninterrupted service and maintain compliance with regulatory requirements,” the plan states. The total estimated cost of these improvements is $17 million. The plan states these would likely be funded through TWDB and USDA with TDA grants. DrainageThe plan states a five-objective plan to convey runoff water in a way that prevents flooding and damage to property. This includes cleaning culverts and storm inlets, grading roadside ditches, removing silt and vegetation from curb and gutter sections, creek maintenance on Walker Branch and Gunsolus Creek and developing a storm drainage maintenance program to include routine ditch grading, silt removal, vegetation removal as well as maintenance activities and annual cost estimate.The cost of the work for the drainage improvements is estimated at $300,000. “While the improvements may be eligible in part by an outside funding source, the city will likely need to allocate budget funds to address the improvements over time,” the plan states.  The roads and the population/housing portions of the comprehensive plan will be covered in next Wednesday’s edition of the Breckenridge American. News Log in to post comments