Marble Falls OKs contract for water treatment plant work
Marble Falls City Council members unanimously approved a contract January 7 with the engineering service Trihydro for the rehabilitation of the water treatment plant’s water clarifier and the expansion of its outgoing pumping capacity.
The clarifier, which was initially built in the 1980s, was not improved in previous rehabilitations because it was needed to avoid a disruption of service while the rest of the facility was under construction.
“Rehabbing the existing clarifier was originally part of the expansion,” City Engineer Kacey Paul said. “It wasn’t possible to take that one offline while we were building the other one. So we needed to wait until the expansion was operational and in place before we take the existing clarifier offline.”
The rehabilitation will involve draining the clarifier and replacing all of its inner workings as well as expanding the outgoing pump capacity from 3 million gallons per day to 6 million gallons a day to meet the city’s preferred peak flow of 4.8 million gallons per day.
Officials hope to complete the design and submit it to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality in March and begin the bid process that same month with construction starting in April, Paul said.
“We hope to complete construction by the fall,” Paul said.