Ger ready, Rockdale water customers.
As the city prepares to talk dollars and cents in its effort to replace its “failing” water system, a series of inevitable water rate increases looms for the next five years.
“The city has applied, and been accepted, to take on (up to) $48-million in debt which will result in multiple water rate hikes over the next five years, and 30 years to pay it off,” City Manager Chris Whittaker said.
The city council is expected to begin discussion of rates in its Dec. 10 meeting.
COMPLAINT—Whittaker said there’s another rate hike coming in addition to the ones forecast to address the longtime “red water” problem.
“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,” he said.
Earlier this month, Whittaker told the council Tuesday the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality mandates “pH levels” be between 7 and 10 (seven is the neutral point between acid and alkaline) and Rockdale’s is 6.5.
Rockdale will have to install tanks, pumps and a caustic additive to get to that mark.
He noted said the project will not fix Rockdale’s chronic red water problem. “Once it goes through those old cast iron pipes we lose that pH level until we fix the water system like we have planned,” he said.
TWO SOURCES—
Whittaker said there are two sources to the water system’s problem and both have to be fixed.
“Our aquifer, the Carrizo-Wilcox, is shallow at the Rockdale end and consists of high deposit of iron and manganese in the water,” he said.
“Our current treatment (using chemicals) is inadequate to extract the iron and manganese through this filtration process,” Whittaker said.
He said the second issue is 26 miles of water pipes—some of them over 100 years old (see photo, page 1A).
“If we have these pipes, while upgrading our water system, we put the iron back in the water,” he said.
Whittaker said any comprehensive plan to fix the red water problem must address both issues “to ensure we don’t raise water rates and not solve the problem.”
FORUMS—Whittaker said the ongoing plan to address Rockdale’s water will be addressed in future city council sessions and also in public forums over the next few weeks.
In September, Whittaker referred to Rockdale’s water system as “failing.”
He noted since 2014 the city has recorded 1,400 water line breaks and 36 main breaks.
Whittaker said the city loses up to 25 percent of its water every year to breaks or “other issues.”
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