NOTES FROM THE CITY
The time to fix Rock-dale red water is here. Written about, talked about, drank, flushed and even suggested as a Fall Festival, it’s time for it to go away.
The City of Rockdale has applied and been accepted to take on $48-million in debt which will result in multiple water rate hikes over the next five years and 30 years to pay it off.
There are two primary causes to the color, the natural turbidity and the old pipes flaking into the water, the first being the primary source.
Our aquifer, the Carrizo-Wilcox is shallow at the Rockdale end and consists of high deposits in iron and manganese in this water.
Our current treatment (using chemicals) to this water is inadequate to extract the iron and manganese through the filtration process which would include special media to facilitate this process: we currently mask the color.
The second issue are these 100 year-old cast iron pipes which consist of 26 miles in length throughout Rockdale.
If we have these pipes while upgrading our water treatment, we put the iron back in the water.
So as we discuss, debate, and swear about red water, we need to do both parts to ensure that we don’t raise water rates and not solve the problem.
Yes, I wish it was solved years ago at a greatly reduced cost but that did not happen so it is our problem to solve today.
Yes, we can “kick the can down the road” like everyone else.
If we choose not to solve the problem, we will push it on to future generations (at increased material, labor and other fees) and continue to accrue Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) fines spending our tax money in checks to TCEQ.
Right now, there is a current complaint about the quality of our water and we will raise rates over $10 per bill to fix it.
Since December 2014 when I got here, there have been 1,400 water line leaks and 36 main breaks with approximately 14-20 open every day.
That takes us up to a few weeks or months to fix the low priority leaks (low volume) while we lose up to 25 percent of our water every year to these breaks or other issues.
We are lucky to this point that we have not lost enough pressure to drain the water tower and cause a boil water notice.
Every year we apply for grants from the federal government called the Community Development Block Grant (federal dollars) and Post Oak Savannah Ground Water Conservation district (local dollars) with the grants being about $300,000 each.
Now, $300,000 only gets about two blocks of water line against the 26 miles of requirements.
We will talk about this in public forums over the next few weeks and we look forward to your feedback.
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