Climate, Water, Environment, and Parks Committee (CWEPC) Meeting Transcript – 10/22/2025 Title: ATXN-1 (24hr) Channel: 1 - ATXN-1 Recorded On: 10/22/2025 6:00:00AM Original Air Date: 10/22/2025 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== Please note that the following transcript is for reference purposes and does not constitute the official record of actions taken during the meeting. For the official record of actions of the meeting, please refer to the Approved Minutes. [8:59:49 AM] Good morning everybody. I will call this meeting of the climate, water, environment and parks committee to order. It is Wednesday, October 22nd at 9 A.M. We are in therds and commissions room in Austin city hall 301 west second street. A quorum of the committee is present, so we will start with our public communication. I [9:00:49 AM] our public communication. I understand we have some speakers. >> Yes, we have six. >> All right. Let's call them up. >> If I can have Mike kennerty. >> Starting by pushing the right button. Good morning y'all. Mike kennerty with. >> That was great testimony. Thank you very much. >> Start again. Good morning I'm Mike I'm chair with zilker 351. And today I wanted to [9:01:50 AM] 351. And today I wanted to briefly describe some of the zilker environmental priority projects from the council approved Barton springs pool master plan. These will help address drainage erosion, enhance water quality with a series of projects including restoring the shoreline, removing invasive trees and planting new trees, and improving trail connections and accessibility at zilker. But it will also help leverage private funding that can show up with direction from council. I'm just going to kind of show you briefly without belaboring the background here, but for over 20 years,ity council has noted there are chronic conditions at zilker that need immediate need for improvements. For 20 years we've been saying that. So this this particularplan I want to draw your attention to is one of many that relate to improvements that can be done at Barton springs, zilker park. And for today, I wanted to focus on the Barton springs pool master plan. This was approved by council in 2009, and it includes, as this slide shows, that I've I've [9:02:51 AM] slide shows, that I've I've left you some printouts that you can read, but there there's a number of projects that are in and around the pool. So some of the long term projects in the pool area, like the bathhouse renovation and the south grouimprovement, have already been done. But I wanted to make sure you were aware that there are other improvements downstream from the pool. It's called the dog park improvements, and further downstream there's also recommendations throughout the plan to have TRE plantings all around the park. And then there's also recommendation to complete what's called the zilker loop trail. And I want to draw your attention to the fact that this is a different zilker loop than you're going to be hearing about later today, which is a bus loop. So there might be some confusion about the different loops inhihis slide. I just wanted to show some of the details of the dog park and downstream improvements. But basically they call for restoring the shoreline so that all the trampoline that happens with the heavy visitor usage can be mitigated, and we can have more trees and a more naturalrea and better water quality [9:03:51 AM] and better water quality outcomes, less erosion. The this slide shows some of the details of what the zilker loop which would be completed. This was actually permitted. I didn't realize this in 2000 by part. And many of the. If you can imagine the loop circling around the pool area, there would be a connection both below the pool down by what is currently the historic Barton springs road bridge. But above the pool there is a bridge proposed and there was detailed schematic designs proposed for that that would basically be upstream from the little concrete slab and right where the old bridge county road bridge used to be located. This uld be merged into the upcoming violet crown trailhead. And so we think this is another recommendation from the Barton springs pool master plan that we would like to see endorsed. And then I've tried to show in this slide some of the TRE planting areas that can happen along the shoreline out of time. >> Thank you very much for the [9:04:51 AM] >> Thank you very much for the presentation and for being here. >> Next up can we have robin rather followed by Chris flores. Chris flores. >> Oh. >> Test test. Thank you. Good morning, Chris flores, district ten I have a couple of words to say about zilker park. Nearly three generations ago, austinites voted for a bond to buy zilker park with interest. It was meant to be a place of natural respite for Austin's workers. Our city grew, more [9:05:51 AM] workers. Our city grew, more parks were purchased, and more people are using them. Forward to today. Whahave invited a commercialiser system to operate, presumably to fund our parks. It has failed. The flow of funds are going from city coffers to the nonprofits, not the other way around. And commercial users like ticketmaster and trail of lights are using zilker as a rent free venue, and the revolving door of park staff working for the commercial users has corrupted the parks department. The commercial contracts are not public. They're hidden from elected people and hidden from public in order to debate them. I think it's time to put the public's alienation from our parks by commercial users seeking to activate their profits on on the ballot, put every contract on the council agenda for active discussion, and end the revolving door. Thank you. >> Thank you for being here. >> If we can have Marc may [9:06:52 AM] >> If we can have Marc may followed by Karen Kocher. >> Oh, hi. My name is Marc, may I live? Oh I'm good okay. Sorry. And you know, I live in d5. I'm here today to talk about park funding. Now we all know that there is a, you know, theory on the ballot whose language implies a good bit of the money will go to parks. I'm not sure that other language and prop cuz actually binding, but I've heard that other that the numbers around six $6 million is going to be spent for parks. All right, so we're at a place where you are asking the taxpayers to pay more money for city basics. So let me ask you [9:07:54 AM] city basics. So let me ask you this. Have you asked our nonprofit partners to bear more of the burden? A few months back, the head of apf was here. There was some gentle questions from CM duchen and pretty much vish praise from all the others. And you took his comment that they preferred not to do maintenance without any pushback. From my read of the apf, nine 9,070%their funding comes from actually renting out our premier public park. This means public money in my book, however, they pay themselves, private sector salaries, their CEO is compensated much more than our mayor. In the same year, they banked $3.6 million for a grand total of nearly $ million. How does this make sense given [9:08:55 AM] How does this make sense given our budget? So I ask again, why can't our nonprofit partners do more? Why is it easier for you all to ask the voters for $6 million for parks, maintenance and nothing from apf when they have $22 million in the in the bank? This is like something out of trump world. Please understand my comments. I'm not saying apf does no good work, or that the nonprofit model is fundamentally unsound. I like and have done several. It's my park days. I've actually donated to apf. I am saying that this that this nonprofit model with apf is broken right now, and I'm asking you to take a step to fix it. Now, I know the big photo shoot is coming where you all will stand by the big check and act like all that money is going to parks. As [9:09:56 AM] money is going to parks. As I've said, their own 990 shows way too much is going to salaries and and into their bank account. I challenge you all to treat the nonprofit partners no better than you treat your own voters and ask them to do more. Thank you. >> Thank you Marc. >> If we can have Karen Kocher. >> Hello. >> Good morning. >> I survived mopac on my way to get here, which is great. >> And you've already won for the day. What's that? You've already won for the day. >> Wu. That's maybe true. Well, I'm here as part of the Barton springs conservancy and the creator of the living springs documentary series. And one of the test challenges to protecting the springs, the aquifer and the habitat is effectively educating the park visitors. And there are four opportunities to do this I'd [9:10:58 AM] opportunities to do this I'd like to speak about. And there's some slides up here. One is the quonset hut and the maintenance barn. And with the loss of the classroom space in the bathhouse, this location could be converted into an amazing educational space to be used by watershed protection department's Earth camp, the Austin nature and science center programs, and the sunshine camp park rangers could also make use of this space to educate visitors from around the world. It's a type of adaptive reuse that is an environmentally souny to go with a strong equity component as well. Another opportunity for interpretive education would be the creation of an overlook on the north side of Barton creek that looks across the sunken garden, providing additional opportunity to tell the story of sunken gardens place within zilker four springs. It is also visible evidence of the aquifer below. There could be information on [9:11:59 AM] There could be information on water quality and quantity, and of course the Barton springs and Austin blind salamanders. It would allow folks to learn about a key park feature that they would otherwise miss unless they go over to the south side, which is actually quite a distance. The zilker ponds provyet another opportunity for environmental uplift, environmental education, and increasing accessibility. Currently, the path through this area from the upper parking lot is dangerous for the mobile and inaccessible to those who are mobility impaired. It is full of non-native plants and currently no interpretation is provided, so there's a lot of potential there to uplift this project. Finally, and arguably also an opportunity foducation are the proposed restrooms and changing areas on the south side of the pool. The nearest bathroom is close to half a mile round trip and up a flight of 32 St. If you've ever taken time to count them. So it's not hard to imagine [9:13:00 AM] So it's not hard to imagine where people relieve themselves. If only 20% of Barton springs attendees came through the south side each year, this is close to 100,000 people. I'll just ask you to use your imagination and think about water quality. It would be great if we could take care of this environmental hazard. And I was not kidding when I about the opportunity for interpretation within that space. The great thing about all these four projects is that there is an opportunity to unlock private funds to pay for them, and not costing the taxpayers a cent. So we would love to get these things moving with the recommendation from this committee. Since the zilker vision plan blow up, the park staff is waiting for. >> The city manager to act, and it would be great to have your blessing so that we can get this important project going. Thank you. It's been a long thank you. >> Thank you so much for being here. >> Mr. >> Do you have one more copy? >> Yes. [9:14:01 AM] >> Yes. >> Thank you. >> Lastly, we have Nico Howard. >> Who might be stuck on mopac. >> All right. I don't see Nico either, but we will. If he shows up later, we'll give him the opportunity to speak. All right. Just for the record, show that vice chair Ellis is present. With THA I'd like to move to item number one, approval of the minutes. Can I get a motion to approve the minutes? Vice chair Ellis, seconded by council member duchen. And no objection. The minutes from our September 24th, 2020 meeting are approved. With that, we can move to item number two, a briefing on long range planning at Austin water facilities capital improvement program and major construction projects. And I see the Austin water team before us. So I'll let director Olson take it away. [9:15:03 AM] let director Olson take it away. >> Good morning. Chair. Council members, thank you for having us here today to talk about Austin water's long range planning. So as you all know, we're a large water utility. We serve over a million people in central Texas. And so we do a number of long range planning exercises that are that are well integrated with one another and hence the the presentation by our combined team here. So we'll start out by talking about our capital improvements program planning and how we prioritize the projects that we bring to council for approval. And that will be led by martin tower, our infrastructure management division manager. And then we'll talk about our facilities planning. So this is we manage a number of city properties that have Austin water [9:16:04 AM] that have Austin water personnel for service centers, treatment plants, administrative buildings and and other facilities. And so our facilities management division manager, Melvin Frazier, will talk us through that. And then we're going to hit some of the highlights of our major construction projects. So as you all know, we have a number of well, we have hundreds of projects that range from relatively small to truly generational. And so Charles, our assistant director of engineering, will will talk us through a few examples of those projects. So thank you again for your time and attention. And I'll turn it over to martin. >> Good morning. My name is martin tower. I lead our infrastructure management division, which is responsible for strategic asset management and our capital improvements planning process. Austin water owns and operates six major treatment plants, hundreds of remote facilities like pumping stations, reservoirs, lift stations, package wastewater [9:17:06 AM] stations, package wastewater treatment plants. We have almost 3000 miles of wastewater pipe, almost 4000 miles of water pipe and all the support facilities needed for the staff we depend upon to ensure reliable water, wastewater and reclaimed water services. Altogether, it's an asset base worth several billion dollars. Our capital improvements program allows us to renew these assets as they age, enhance our systems and pursue opportunities to innovate, as well as expand capacity as ne to keep up with our dynamic community. The net result is perennially the largest and most sophisticated cip program in the city, in which staff at every level of the organization contribute to identifying the investments Ed to ensure reliable and resilient service. At Austin water, a committee of the executive team oversees the annual process by which the cip plan is developed. Each year, the plan is built up from zero, with every proposed capital investment reviewed and the progress of every active [9:18:08 AM] progress of every active project revisited, ensuring alignment with current priorities. In practice, this takes the form of a consensus judgment of the priority of dozens of business cases covering all major investments. This is paired with the delegation of authority to our cip chairs. These are middle managers who are closer to the ground and responsible for delivering the improvements based on asset risk data. These cip chairs are allocated to budget for the hundreds of projects that address bread and butter. Renewal of aging assets. In this way, Austin water staff requests are scrutinized, vetted and validated before the plan is finalized, trimming dozens of projts and hundreds of millions in spending before is included in the annual budget submittal. Our cip chairs are instrumental in gathering input from internal and external stakeholders to scope projects and synthesize capitallan proposals for their respective infrastructure groups. Theyotot only determine how best to deploy the renewal funding, but identify [9:19:09 AM] funding, but identify opportunities for collaboration with other city departments and regional mobility projects.. They also identify efficiencies through participation in service extension requests, betterments and other nering opportunities. These managers and their staff are actively engaged with many key planning efforts such as water forward, imagine Austin and project connect, ensuring that the capital improvements pieces of these important plans are correctly accounted for in Austin water cip plan. In this slide, we can see the scale of the five year cip plan as we've developed and refined it over the years at Austin water. During each budget cycle, we create a five year plans and forecast out ten years to communicate to the many stakeholders, as well as mobilize the resources needed to deliver these complex projects. These heavy infrastructure projects typically take 3 to 7 years from planning to start up, and longer for the most complex. Using our data driven, risk adjusted, zero based cip [9:20:10 AM] adjusted, zero based cip planning process, our leadership was able to systematically refine a staff request of 3.6 billion down to the $2.7 billion, five year an that was included in the city budget passed in August. A lot of the growth you see in the bars has been the arrival of long anticipated major generational investments into the five year planning window. Examples of these major projects include the recently completed advanced metering infrastructure, the walnut creek wastewater treatment plant expansion, ahe implementation of water forward strategies like aquifer storage and recovery, and improvements to our support facilities and campuses, which you'll hear about shortly. Austin water has a variety of investment needs Ross different asset classes that we rely upon to deliver water services to the community. This chart shows the breakdown by asset class and is inclusive of all investment drivers. So that's combining renewal, enhancement, and growth. At a glance, you can see tmpact of the walnut creek wastewater treatment plant and its [9:21:12 AM] treatment plant and its expansion in the size of the light green category. That's the wastewater treatment plant category. And the Williamson creek interceptor in the darker green wastewater pipe network category. We can alse the aquifer storage and recovery strategy of water forward impacting the dark blue pump station reservoir category and the several other infrastructure groups that we have that ma U up our asset base. I'll now hand it off to Melvin Frazier in our buildings group to talk a bit about the important investments that we're making in Austin waters campuses. >>'M sorry to interrupt all the way to the end, but I'm just curious, while we're on that last slide. Yeah. Why is our wastewater network so much more expensive than our treated water network, even though we have more treated water lines than wastewater lines? >> There's a few reasons for that. The one of the most high profile ones that we see is major investments in things [9:22:12 AM] major investments in things like the Williamson creek interceptor, as well as a more kind of standard explanation, which may not be specific to this moment, but the fact that wastewater pipes, because they are gravity and at depth and larger, are by foot, a more expensive commodity than water pipes, you can be shallower and and less expensive to deploy. Yeah >> Well, thank you very much, martin. My name is Melvin Frazier. I'm the facilities management division manager for Austin water, and I have the privilege of talking to you a little. I have the privi of talking to you for a little bit about our long range building plan. So probably from the very first treatment plant that was [9:23:12 AM] first treatment plant that was built in Austin, the facilities of Austin water have been very important to the people of Austin. So while I'm not going to bore you by going back into story to talk about the very first treatment plant, I will bring you to 2019. So in 2019, there was a study, a utilization study that was completed with all of our facilities, and it helped us to determine that there was a definite need for us to upgrade our facilities and to make them better. And so therefore, we created our long range building plan that was going to help us to be able to do that. But over the course of time and just even presently, we have our facilities that serve over a million customers, over 548mi !S, and these are over 20 different locations or campuses. But if you dig a little bit deeper, it's not just 20 different locations, but it's 63 buildings that we have that we have to take care of. And these 63 buildings range anywhere [9:24:13 AM] 63 buildings range anywhere from office spaces to our call centers to shop areas, warehouses, storage areas, emergency operations. There's a broad range of things that our facilities take care of. And for the most part, our facilities are housing our staff. And without our staff, we are able to take care of the good people of the city of Austin. So if we're looking at this slide here, this is showing where on the map are all of our different facilities. And so our long range building plan is to take care of all of these facilities, but maybe at different levels. 'D like to just dig a little bit deeper and show you the different levels that that we're speaking about here. We're talking we're here showing our permanent facilities that aren't going to move, aren't going to change. These are our treatment plants, whether it's our wastewater plants or our treatment plants. For the city of Boston, these plants are going to be there to [9:25:13 AM] plants are going to be there to continue to serve our customers. But they have many different buildings such as maintenance buildings, shop buildings, hvac Gates, all sorts of things that have to be maintained and upgraded. And so while our long range plan is not rebuilding these at this time or is not inside of our plan, they have to be maintained in order for us to be able to do the right type of upkeep and make sure that everything is cared for. So next, we'll talk a little bit. >> About. >> Okay. >> Shall we pause or shall we keep going if you all are following along okay. >> Okay okay. So next we'll talk a little bit about our facilities. That's for our customer service. Now our facilities for our customer service, our facilities that provide places for our operations to be able to come to and to be able to move out [9:26:15 AM] to and to be able to move out to the field in order to take care of our customers. Places like our south service center, our north service center, Glen bell service center. We also have Riker ranch, Rutherford house, and also we also places like Timothy Olivier. All of these are service centers that our staff works at and that have to be maintained and upgraded. And these are also part of our long range plan to also maintain, make sure that we maintain those and upgrade them for the people of Austin and also for our staff. But what's even more exciting is some of our new and future properties that that we have. So unfortunately, our slide isn't up. But I can tell you and if you close your eyes, you might can visualize it. I can go to the top and we're going to talk about the property that we have. That's going to be our future new north service center hub. And then we also have a property that we purchased that you're probably familiar with. That's more in the middle of [9:27:15 AM] That's more in the middle of the map near 35 and saint John's. This is our new Austin water control center. And I'll briefly mention a few more things about that a little bit later, but one that you're probably even more familiar with if you go a little bit down to the southeast is our new south service center hub, and I'll also be speaking a little bit more about that. So when we're talking about our long range oh I'm sorry. Next slide. You got the slides I'm sorry okay. So our next slide about the key projects that we have underway. So I'll talk about two of our key projects that we have going on. And our first and foremost is our Austin water control center. And so this was our purchased about a year and a half ago. It was an existing building. And we are renovating this building to be able to be a combined lab. We're also going to have our security operations. That's going to be out of this. Any type of ergrgency operations [9:28:17 AM] type of ergrgency operations will come from this building. And then we'll also have different other supportive operations, such as our our dispatch and our, of course, our control center. This will be our major control center for our operations. We're very excited about this because excuse me, this is one of our first major construction projects that we're undertaking, and we are able to utilize the Austin public facilities corporation to be able to H help us with this. And at this present moment, we're well under our way. We'reut at our we just had our 75% construction documents. And so that's helping us to to get to the point where we'll be able to finalize things and have construction underway soon. Hopefully, we have planned for this project to be completed by the end of 2026. Our other project that we have underway is the renovation of our the walnut creek center. Now, this renovation is being taken care [9:29:19 AM] renovation is being taken care of in two different phases. First with floors one and ten, and then from floors two through nine. And this will be a full renovation of this building, upgrading new technologies, making the space more manageable for our people and more effective for our staff. And the first part of this phase will start taking place in January of 2026. So we're looking forward to to that now as we go to our next slide. This is a slide that talks about our new south service center hub. And this is something that was just purchased last last month. And it's we consider it kind of a game changer for Austin water. And why is that. Well it gives us an opportunity to put the long range part of our plan into effect. We're able to plan for the future. We're able to decide how things could be, to be able to be more helpful for the use of our use of our staff, [9:30:20 AM] the use of our use of our staff, also for the use of many different operations, and also to be able to expand with the growing city. I know that's something that you all are affected by. Every day is the place keeps growing. We get more and more people. So how do we deal with that? Well, that's the same thing that Austin water has to deal with, because we serve the people of the city of Austin. And so this new service, this new south hub, will give us that ability to be able to plan not just for now, but for the future. So if we move into our last slide, our long range plan is can be summarized in just a few, a few different terms. Our plan needs to be flexible, flexible to meet the needs of the future. The future. The word of the future means that you don't know what's what's exactly going to happen, but you got to have the flexibility to be able to meet the needs of whatever is going to happen. And so our plan is, is flexible enough to [9:31:21 AM] plan is, is flexible enough to make changes as needed to be able to go into a direction, but also to be able to turn left or right if we have to. Our long range plan also helps us to balance our routine maintenance that's needed each and every day with our long term functional needs. It also provides us the aty to look for different type of synergies, to enhance efficiency and also responsiveness, and then sustainable elements. We're always thinking about sustainability, resiliency for the future, purple pipe things that's going to be able to help our Earth to last just a little bit longer. We want to incorporate those things into our plan. But one of the mostimportant things is to provide a good work environment for Austin water employees. If Austin water employees have a good work environment, then what can they do for the city? They'll be able to make sure that they they take care of our city even more effectively. And so that's what we're looking at when it comes to our long range building plan. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you a little bit about that. So now [9:32:23 AM] a little bit about that. So now I want to give our attention to my friend and colleague, Mr. Charles solaro. He's going to help us about some major projects. >> Thank you. Thank you Melvin. I'm the assistant director for engineering technical services, and one of the major things that I do in my department is the implementation and delivery of capital improvement projects, such as some of the things we've talked about today. In today's presentation, I'm going to go over through some of some of our six major projects that we have. They're most are quite large, so T they prepare for long range planning and can be have some associated with some risks. And we'll talk about how some of the risks we mitigate, some of those risks. And one aspect of, of, of evaluating projects and how we deliver those projects is alternative delivery methods such as competitive Cecile proposal or construction manager at risks. And we'll go through a couple [9:33:23 AM] And we'll go through a couple of projects here today. We'll look at sncing of construction so we don't impact thstomers. As arduous as some of these projects have a tendency to do, and how the proposed projects will interconnect with the existing project, how that interface happens and how we mitigate that, as well as for the continued maintenance of operations. And this will be mentioned several times through the day, is that we need to be able to maintain a level of service while we we're rehabilitating or expanding facilities so we can maintain that service for the customers. Mentioned, we'll have I'll go through six projects in our three main categories. I've broken them up into infrastructure, rehabilitation, operational enhancement, and system expansion. So the first would be the rehabilitation projects, and that would be repairing or upgrading existing infrastructure. Well, it's there we go. The first project [9:34:28 AM] there we go. The first project I'd like to discuss is, as martin had mentioned previously, is the Williamson creek wastewater interceptor. This is a three and a half mile long, 72 interceptor that will replace an existing gravity sewer that was almost installed 60 years ago. The project challenges include in how we mitigate some of those challenges was we used a competitive Cecile proposal on this project. This allows us to not only evaluate the price that the contractor provided, T also the contractor's qualification and experience in selecting the contractor. The new interceptor will be installed utilizing trenchless technologies. Where feasible, most of the pipe will be constructed as a tunnel about 40 to 60ft deep. That would minimize impacts to customers as well as to the creek. And there is a section of pipe where we're actually putting a pipe within the existing pipe, what we ca cured in place, [9:35:28 AM] what we ca cured in place, that's shown in yellow on this graphic. And that's a way of of rehabilitating an existing line. We will also remove as much of the existing pipe from the creek as feasible. Awesome. Water will build a water quality pond that will serve as a. For water treatment for a future parking lot for for Austin parks and recreational. We. We will convey four acres of land to awesome parks and recreation, as well as purchase an additional acreage for trail easements. With this project. This current project is in the bid phase. We actually took bids this this month. The next one is renewing Austin, and this is an initiative to replace aging pipelines across the city to improve reliability, reduce cost of repairs from frequent breaks, and conserve water. Awesome water identifies [9:36:28 AM] water. Awesome water identifies poor performing pipe with historical break data, leak repair orders, as well as condition assessment. The rehabilitation of these pipes is kind of see in the street is street repairs. After we do the actual pavement traffic control plans, we will most likely a lot of our pipes are in the roadway, so we'll have to detour the traffic. So as you're driving home, sometimes you have to detour. So that's we try to minimize those as much as possible. And if we are putting a new pipe in the ground, we often move the services from the old pipe to the new pipe. So then there's a disruption for those customers, and we minimize those as much as possible as well. And of course, the prioritization of which pipes we do first. And as mentioned, we utilize historical break data. And where the more most the the where the performing pipe is, we try to go get those and repair those. The next is operational enhancement [9:37:29 AM] operational enhancement projects. And this is these are projects that will improve the efficiency of operations and treatment. The first project we would like to discuss is the reclaim distribution system. The reclaim distribution system provides reuse water for non-potable uses such as irrigation, cooling towers and toilet flushing. And the example project I have today are five projects which we call completing the core, and this will connect the what I call the northern reclaim distribution system, which is served by walnut creek wastewater treatment plant and connected to the southern reclaim distribution system, which is served by south Austin regional wastewater treatment plant. This extension of the reclaim water infructure will provide downtown with two reclaimed water sources, improving reliability. It provides that looping that we try to do with the water distribution system, which has served us very well in the water sector side. These projects are either in [9:38:30 AM] projects are either in construction or at the last stages of final design. The next project I'd like to discuss is the Hancock's resiliency project. This project will provide resiliency throughout the wat treatment plant to provide a second basin for solids collection and storage and treatment. Currently, there's only one basin and no redundancy, and those basins are shown in yellow on this slide. This is a winter storm uri. External review recommendation, and it will provide the same level of redundancy that we operate at Davis and Ulrich water treatment plant. It will also be able to provide the staff availability to maintain a piece of equipment without having to reduce the treatment capacity of the plant below 50 million gallons per day. This project has just finished preliminary engineering design, and we were doing the proposal for final design. The last project I'd like to discuss are [9:39:31 AM] project I'd like to discuss are system expansion projects. And this is the. These projects are needed to provide and maintain the capacity and the level of service for the customers of Austin. The first one I'd like to discuss the medium Davis service transmission main. This is aa5 point seven mile, 84 inch transmission main that will take treated potable water from Davis water treatment plant east to just pass the William Morris golf course on mlk boulevard. This new infrastructure will provide water transmission to the central pressure zone, which is the central down area, as well as to east Austin. This project will also use trenchless technology and will be a tunnel depth, probably approaching up to 60ft deep to minimize any impacts to the customers. This project is also just recently finished. Preliminary. Preliminary engineering design. The last one I'd like to discuss is the Williamson creek wastewater [9:40:32 AM] Williamson creek wastewater treatment plant expansion and enhancement. This project will take the treatment capacity of the walnut creek from 75 million gallons per day to 100 million gallons per day, and is truly a example of a generational investment in the city for the city of Austin. The not only are we just expanding the actual treatment capacity of the plant will be upgrading the treatment capacity and excuse me, the treatment methodology to what we call biological nutrient removal. So we'll have a higher quality water leaving the plant not only for the 25 million gallons per day that for the expansion, but also going back into the existing 75 million gallons per day plant and converting that we will have a flood wall around the plant to protect it from flood walls, from flooding events. We'll have advanced odor control mitigation through such technology as bio filters and activated carbon. We will [9:41:32 AM] activated carbon. We will provide plant wide modernization of some aging infrastructure, particularly the headworks structure. The plant will also use inherently safer technology. We will we will disinfect the water using ultraviolet versus chlorine gas once we get done. So it'll be safer technology to use. And as we've discussed many times already today, is the is the continuing service of of the plant. While we're doing the construction. How do we expand this, convert the existing plant while we're still trying to maintain a capacity of 75 million gallons per day of water ruining through the plant? These are very this is very large project. We have chosen a cmr construction manager, at risk contractor for this project. Again, this allows us to evaluate not only the price but contractor's experience and qualifications for the project. We onboarded the Seymour contractor as we [9:42:33 AM] Seymour contractor as we finished preliminary engineering design, and even before we had the 30% design complete. The advantages of a Seymour contractor are as early or early collaboration as I just mentioned. The the contractor is in the same room with the operations staff, with the engineering staff to develop the plans. It also provides a scheduling efficiency where we can overlap some some processes as well as risk mitigation. And the important one is that the continuing of the operation of the plant, while we are expanding and converting the plant. So how are we going to do all this? Right. We're going to take the bigger project, and we're going to break it up into packages. And part of the cmr construction method is to have the contractor give us what we call guaranteed maximum price packages, and we break those up. And we have the eight packages [9:43:34 AM] And we have the eight packages that I show up here. The bottom one of the the rehabilitation of the PTC is a different Seymour contractor. But I just showed it on the on the plants for clarity. Package number one is shown in red and that's the headworks and the influent lift station. These are some rehabilitating projects that we have done. We need to get the headworks done completed first before we take down headworks number two for its expansion package two is mobilization and site services. This is where the contractor will have its trailers and meet. So we have those packages going on. Package number three is long lead items. This is a non construction activity. But this is allows us to actually purchase some equipment that will take over a year to to manufacture and deliver on site. So we can get those started now. And then again this is the part of the overlapping of the schedule of the construction for is the flood wall. As I mentioned, we are excuse me, we [9:44:36 AM] mentioned, we are excuse me, we are in a floodplain now after atlas 14, so we're providing a flood wall to protect it from any kind of flood event. Package number five is actually shown in blue. Is the actual expansion. That's the actual 25 million gallons per day new treatment capacity that we're providing onto the plant. Package number six is a wet weather facility that is for high flow events that come to the city, to the wastewater treatment plant. Package seven is actually going back in and converting the existing plant to a biological nutrient removal. And package eight is kind of that purple line that's leaving the plant. And that is to provide a new outfall for the new flow that's coming to the plant. As you can see on this, on this slide here, much of this of this expansion is really true enhancement of the of the plant itself. There's much more than just expanding the plant. We are doing much more than that. We're expanding of all the enhancements that we're doing with the plant at the time. Construction schedule, [9:45:36 AM] the time. Construction schedule, this this shows how we are going to implement all of the eight guaranteed maximum price packages. As you can see, there's overlapping of the of the of our activities. Right. The gray bar showing the design, which will continue all the way through 2026, is overlap with the pre-construction phase services. That is where the contractor is sitting with us and helping them develop plans, creating cost estimates and things of that nature, as well as the actual construction of the project shown in blue. This allows for a shorter duration and provides a better value for the city. The red line on this graph shows what we call the critical path, and anything that delays is a delay on this red line actually delays the actual project itself. There is no float in this. In the critical path is the actual getting the early lead equipment, early lead items I mentioned to get those started in manufacturing and purchasing, [9:46:37 AM] in manufacturing and purchasing, constructing the 25 million gallon per day facility so we can go back into the existing facility, which is the package number seven, and do that final conversion of biological nutrient removal. So this is this construction schedule will take over six years to get this done. So not only a long planning process, but actually a very long construction schedule for for for this particular project. As we are going through the pre-construction phase and the advancement of the construction drawings, as mentioned, we have the contractor on board before even 30% plans. And as he's helping us develop those plans, we are seeing some uncertainty in in the project cost. While we're going through this, we will be getting the other guaranteed maximum price contracts in here shortly for the remainder of this year and as the beginning of next year, we have found out that we have been selected for federal loans. [9:47:38 AM] been selected for federal loans. That will be that we have loans up to 49% of the construction projects. So we're very excited about that. But like most other projects in the city, we're seeing some inflationary costs. We're seeing that the maintenance of operation cost, the constructability is a is a significant factor for us, and we're working with the contractor to see what is available to us to be able to expand and convert the plant without providing a large temporary treatment and bypasses, you know, because those are costly effectively, and they're not part of the permanent construction. So we're working with those as well as constraints on the site. We're seeing the the site have very tight constraints. If you were to go out there today, you will actually see a tower cra, same kind of crane. You see askyscraper. And we're utilizing that kind of construction methodology for the tight cess and for be able to have multiple contractors use a single source crane. We are also embarked on developing [9:48:41 AM] also embarked on developing this project as an envisioned rated project. I think a lot of people have heard of of lead and, well, certifications for buildings. We are going for certification of vision for infrastructure project and it's this, this rating is designed for infrastructure projects. And we are going to go seek that. If we are successful. When we are successful, it will be the largest wastewater treatment plant. Envision rated project in the United States. This brings me to the end of the Austin waters long range presentation, and please let us know if martin or Melvin or I can answer any questions. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. Very thorough presentation. Are there any questions, councilmember duchen? >> Thank you, chair. I wanted to start with, I think it's slide 28. It is the Davis service transmission main. And [9:49:44 AM] service transmission main. And I noticed one of the bullet points there is mitigating the impacts to neighbors. You mentioned I think going down 60ft deep to try and address that issue. We've had a variety of what I would call spirited communication from neighbors about prior. And I think maybe current maintenance challenges there. Can you expand on what how the 60ft that you mentioned, if I heard you right, or what other measures you may be taking to address those? Sort of mitigation impacts? >> Councilmember. Do you specifically mean the neighbors of the plant itself? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the so I think one of the things that we're and I'll let I'll let Charles weigh in, if I to add any color that he needs to. But the challenge related to the neighbors directly adjacent to the Davis water treatment plant will be the very deep shaft that's needed to connect this tunnel to the treatment plant. And so we are looking at options on [9:50:45 AM] we are looking at options on the site and off site to be able to to make that connection in a way that minimizes the impacts to the neighbors. Is that fair? >> That is correct. Not all shafts are equal with the shafts. You may see on page 35. Excuse me, sorry, on page 35. They're very large. They have the crane and all that because they need to lower the tunnel boring machine in there and they need to take the dirt out. Right. There's also just a retrieval shafts which are much smaller than that. And so we're as director Shea mentioned, the larger shaft we're trying to do, we're planning to be off site from, from the, from the water treatment plant. So therefore we all would need is just to have as the pipe enters the water treatment plant would just be able to retrieve the equipment. >> Okay. What sort of. Just out of curiosity, what sort of timeline does that sort of project have for implementing just to sort of coordinate with. >> Very long? I think we're [9:51:46 AM] >> Very long? I think we're starting. >> We're just finished a preliminary engineering. We'll probably in about two more years of final design. There will be most likely easements that will have to be obtained or even temporary construction easements. So those take some time to do as well as well as the construction of this will take quite some time I imagine. More than four years. >> Okay, so two years just to break ground and then another four years after that. >> And I would even venture a little bit longer. >> Than that. Okay. So there, we've got a bit of time to try and work with them to notify. >> We do. And certainly on a project of this size, we'll have a really robust public information process to make sure that everyone's aware of what we're doing and when we're doing it. >> Okay. Thank you. That's encouraging. >> And commissioner, we also have standing yearly meetings with them okay. >> Just out of curiosity. So my math this facility is 71 years old, roughly something like that. How often do these treatment plants last? And I'm [9:52:47 AM] treatment plants last? And I'm asking also in the context of the project, you just talked about the walnut creek expansion two. Like, how long do we typically expect to see a treatment facility last before we either do major capital improvements or renovations? Because I understand that from what you just explained, part of what walnut creek has is, is existing is the expansion, but also renovating existing facilities there. Right. >> So the you know, when we look at our, our fellow water utilities that are in even older cities than we're in, we see that the they make long range investments in their existing infrastructure. And then at some point that it requires a more major intervention of either rebuilding basins or even, you know, decommissioning and, and, and building new typically certainly for us, the location of our water and wastewater [9:53:49 AM] of our water and wastewater treatment plants, they they are essentially where they need to be our water plants in order to access water from lake Austin. And then the major transmission mains coming out of that site. So what I would envision, even in the long term for Austin is that we would rld on that existing site rather than relocate, so concrete may last, you know, 50 to 100 years, but we are always in there doing rehabilitation and new construction projects in order to extend the life of the of that location. Do you want to add anything to that. >> Martin tower again, infrastructure management I would just add it's a bit like the ship that leaves port on a long journey, and the boards get replaced all along the way. Is it the same ship when you've gotten to your destination? We've got mechanical assets that are rotating that last 25, 35 years. We've got instrumentation and control [9:54:49 AM] instrumentation and control assets. The last ten years we've got structural assets that last 100, 110 years. And as our director pointed out, we're kind of doing that work all along the way. It's when we have major expansions or some significant enhancement, both of which are happening in this instance at walnut, that we see a big slug of investment. >> And when you do that, does that coincide, just like you're doing with walnut creek, with using that opportunity to try and also renovate? I mean, it's going to probably be an unfair comparison, but when I think of the work that we do in housing and extending the life of older properties, there's a point that the cost of maintenance eclipses the cost of whatever that revenue is collected. So is there a is there a similar analogy to how you all approach the renovation or to your point, director, is there a way that we understand when we're going to just be decommissioning and rebuilding on that site? >> Okay. For both the walnut [9:55:51 AM] >> Okay. For both the walnut creek wastewater treatment plant, as we talked about today, as well as the south Austin regional wastewater treatment plant, over the last ten years, we have been in significant gains or I guess we have had significant projects to rehabilitate those plants. So we have gone in basically starting at the at the downstream end, we rehabilitated the filters, the secondary clarifiers, the aeration basins and the primary treatment clarifiers are the primary clarifiers. And now the headworks for headworks. Number one. If the project hadn't overlapped, we probably would have had that as a separate project. But we're utilizing this construction method to do that. Sars going through the same thing right now, right. We are actively on the first two trains of the oldest trail,, actively going and repairing the mechan equipment and electrical equipment right now. So, as martin said, is the ship the same as when we when we arrived? Land is we were constantly rehabilitating and maintaining the structures and [9:56:52 AM] maintaining the structures and the facilities. >> And I would also like to add that part of making sure that these structures are going to last longer has a lot to do with what we what we were talking about with our building plan, because part of that is maintaining those buildings, whether it's changing a roof, whether it's replacing windows, whether replacing doors, whether it's replacing floors, hvac systems, one of the beautiful things about our asset management that martin overlooks is that they're rated every year. And so as they're rated every year, if we're spending too much in maintenance for maybe an hvac system, instead of us trying to continue to fix that system and then our our plan and our asset management helps us to see, hey, you might want to want to change that. So I think the ship is the same that we've been talking about. Okay. It ends up being the same no matter what. We're what we'redoing. But all of our plans are working together is that we're [9:57:53 AM] working together is that we're working to try to maintain something and keep it, keep it going and keep it functioning. >> Okay. I appreciate that last question very quickly. On the pipe replacement, you mentioned that you're looking atperforming mains. You've got a historical break data. You're looking at what is that? Is that just reports of how often those particular mains are being reported to be broken? Is there any other way that we look at or analyze the age or any other factors, or is it all completely just dependent on. On reports? >> Yeah. Sorry. >> Go ahead. >> Okay. >> This is my favorite part where I, where you guys fight over who. >> Yeah. You through me. >> We all want to. >> Talk about. So Brett our asset management program and Austin water, we've invested a lot of time and effort into trying to develop confidence in our enterprise data. Each of our asset classes, you can imagine, has different characteristics that lends itself to different expected, useful lives and have different indicators of condition or failure modes so specific to [9:58:53 AM] failure modes so specific to water pipes, you know, our subject matter experts, we gather in a committee specific to that asset class and say, what data do we have? And its historical break data dominates. But we also can look at some of the capacity constraints and things like that. On the wastewater pipe side, it's a different beast because we can go inside of it. We can put cameras in there, we can look and instead of getting the most information after we have repaired a pipe, we can see ahead of time what the condition is every single year and tweak our approach accordingly. We have different standards for different asset classes beyond pipes as well. But but that's kind of how we do it. Each class has between 1 and 5 criteria that we look to. >> Okay. Thank you for helping me undand that. That's all I've got. I may try and email a couple of follow ups. Thank you. >> And I think also to we don't just rely on people to report but we through the now the water meters. We can know when we have leaks and like in our [9:59:55 AM] we have leaks and like in our neighborhood, all the polybutylene pipes were replaced because they knew those were the ones that break. So they came and replaced them. And I think if I remember correctly, the report talked about some kind of like scanning device that y'all use externally and you, which is amazing to me that you can do that. >> But we have a lot of different tools for assessing the condition of both water S and, and wastewater pipes and other other assets as well. But yeah. >> All right. Vice chair Ellis. >> I've got three hopefully quick questions. I wanted. >> To be quick in our responses. >> Well, and two of them aren't on the list. So I love when this happens. The Barton creek interceptor I know that the last formal response we got from Austin water was that that was about ten years on the outlook. Can you tell me about any updates that are happening since we had started that process, maybe about a year, year and a half ago? >> Yes. The first aspect of [10:00:56 AM] >> Yes. The first aspect of that is I'm going to throw out a different name, the thousand Oaks interceptor. So that is that would be west of mopac. This is a gravel interceptor that would relieve two lift stations, take the abandoned as well as relieve capacity constraints. But that's the first part of the future Barton creek interceptor, where we would come down and then tie into a conceptual mopac interceptor and stay on the west side of mopac and then come down into the downtown tunnel. So the first aspect of that is this Thousand Oaks requirement. The the preliminary phase will include the routing analysis of that pipe, as well as look at the routing analysis of the future conceptual mopac interchange. So that is currently advertised for engineering qualifications. >> Okay. That's great to hear. I know Austin water is already helping me with a constituent on 1000 oaks. That has a different issue. So it seems [10:01:57 AM] different issue. So it seems like there's a lot going on in that area right now. My next question will be about the water treatment plant. A couple of years ago, that was the one everybody was talking about. And now it seems like it's in great shape. I haven't heard of any major repairs that are needing to be kicked off again. I know there were some longer term repairs that maybe were taking about 2 or 3 years to complete. Are those all finished at this stage? >> So the there is always a lot of capital work happening at all of our treatment plants, including Ulrich. And so there are a number of projects that are in various stages of, of design and construction. The a big part of what we have been working on at Ulrich with Austin energy is power resiliency. And so Austin energy has completed a number of improvements to the substation that serves Ulrich. And we have beneficial use of new low electrical feed system on the Austin water side of that substation that feeds our [10:02:58 AM] that substation that feeds our low service pump stations. So yes, projects are proceeding, resiliency is much improd.d. And and Ulrich is is carrying on. >> Glad to hear it. We're big fans of the Ulrich treatment plant in south and southwest Austin. If it's not happy nobody's happy that that's true. Yes. And then my last question will be about southwest pump station. I know there's been discussions around water pressure, especially because some of the areas out along 360 tend to get very hilly. And so I know there's been some issues with water pressure, especially for like fire coverage and things like that. Are those improvements moving along? You can all fight about who. >> Yeah, yeah, we actually have three projects. Two are elevated storage tanks. One is a transmission main. We have the southwest elevated storage tank, and then it has a accompanying project southwest transmission main to do some looping through there to improve pressure through there. We have the I- 35 south elevated [10:03:59 AM] We have the I-35 south elevated storage tank, which again will provide some more resiliency of having water in the air, provide better pressure as well as we have a study in the southwest area to evaluate any additional projects that we need to do for increasing or having a better resiliency of pressure throughout the southwest region of our service area. >> Okay. >> That's great. That's all the questions I had. I appreciate it. >> Very good. >> All right. >> Thank you, chair. >> I'm glad we answered the question about the ship. We decided it's the same ship. I appreciate the philosophy to start the day. Just a couple of brief questions. When we looked at the purchase of the south service center hub site, we also discussed that other properties might become available no longer needed, and so that some of these Austin water facilities that are located more denser residential areas could become available for other city needs. And I'm wondering if if understanding [10:05:00 AM] wondering if if understanding that availability has already happened, if we have a plan for for those properties. >> So we are kicking off our the planning phase for the south hub site, and that will really help us define all the functionality that will go to that site, which will then allow us to see what existing functionality is longer needed at the sites that we currently maintain. So. So the short answer is we're not ready to to. We have more work to do before we'll be ready to have that conversation. But it is it is underway. >> Okay. Thanks, director. So I'm understanding that that might be a multiyear process to figure that out. >> It will be a multiyear process. This is a large site with a lot of facilities on it. There's a lot of different ways we could put this. The future use of this site together. And so we want to be really thoughtful about that. But we're we are Melvin and team are are very excited about making strides quickly on that. So we will keep you informed. [10:06:01 AM] So we will keep you informed. >> Wonderful. Thank you. And then my other question I have a different topic relates to the large scale underground projects like Williamson creek wastewater interceptor and the tunneling. And I just we noticed that like you're doing things like reseeding native grasses, building drainage ponds, making improvements, removing invasive trees. And I guess our question was in these do we also plant new trees? Is that part of the program, or do we other departments to plant trees in these areas? >> I don't know the exact nature of what impact we have on trees. If we are impacting existing TRE, there is no city permitting processes to either remove that TRE and plant new trees. I would have to get back with you if we are planting additional trees. >> Okay, great. Yeah, we're always interested in expanding the TRE canopy, so we'd love to hear more about that. Thank you. >> All right. Well, thank you all very much. Appreciate the [10:07:02 AM] all very much. Appreciate the presentation. And we will move on to item number three, a briefing on zilker environmental priorities including embankment erosion, invasives management and TRE plantings, capital improvement projects. And internal shuttle parking operations. We have Janna. Renfro. Lindsey. Machamer, Mok. All right. I'll let you figure out who goes first. >> Great. >> Good morning. >> Glad to be here with you today. >> My name is Lindsay Machamer. I'm the division manager for park development with parks and recreation, and I'm here with Jana. Good morning. My name. >> Is Jana Renfro. I am a managing engineer with the creek flood and erosion division and the project design [10:08:03 AM] division and the project design and delivery branch within watershed protection, the creek flood and erosion division is comprised of three engineering teams. Fantastic and dedicated engineering teams that oversee capital improvement projects and in-house projects from planning, design all the way into construction for drainage projects. >> All right. And we're here today to talk to you about zilker metropolitan park and the environmental priorities, including walking through efforts for erosion reduction, invasive species management, TRE planting, cover a smattering of other capital improvement projects we have going on, as well as concluding with parking and shuttle operations. And we'll start off by talking more specifically about the Barton creek and Barton springs pool area, before broadening and talking about some efforts in the park at large. So that being said, I'll dive into talking about some of the guiding information we have that influences our work at the park. In the absence of having a vision plan [10:09:03 AM] absence of having a vision plan for the park as a whole, we look to some other guiding documents for reference that have been either adopted or published related to the park, one of the main ones being the Barton springs pool vision plan, which was adopted by council in 2009. And I'll talk a little bit more about that next. Other available documents for reference include the zilker park working group report, which was published in 2019 and discusses alternative transportation options and parking considerations, and also the zilker park natural resources inventory and management guidelines, which were published in 2021. Talking a little bit more spically about the Barton springs pool vision plan, there are a variety of improvements and maintenance activities that are recommended in that plan. As of December 2017, all of the items that have been identified as [10:10:04 AM] that have been identified as short term improvements were completed, with the exception of one item which is was hold pending funding availability, and that was the sunken gardens rehabilitation improvements. And we have been making steps towards advancing that project as well in terms of the longer term improvements that are outlined in that plan, there are some activities that are ongoing that are making progress towards those long term goals as well. One of those or two that you see bulleted on this slide are the Joan means bathhouse rehabilitation, which has been in construction and is nearing completion of the construction soon, and also the sunken gardens improvements, which we'll talk a little bit more about. And I'm going to turn it over to Jana to talk a little bit about the Barton creek improvements that she's been involved with. >> So just to make sure everyone's oriented to where we are in space, this is just an overview of this stretch of Barton creek, which north is up on the screen. So Barton [10:11:05 AM] on the screen. So Barton springs pool is down at the bottom left flowing down to lady bird lake all the way at the top right, Barton springs road obviously crossing in the middle. The butler trail extends on both sides of Barton creek and is pretty much right at the top of bank. Throughout this reach. Just some landmarks down at the upstream end on the left barking springs, just downstream of Barton springs pool dam, and then very near to there, the on the south bank, sunken gardens on the north bank, boat rentals and other recreational access, and then moving downstream towards lady bird lake. We have our Toomey erosion stabilization project and then across the creek right at the confluence point, just to talk in general about the conditions of this stretch of of Barton creek. The north bank and the south bank do have a [10:12:05 AM] and the south bank do have a little bit different characteristics that are worth pointing out. The north bank in general has lower banks, which lends to morereational access and use to the creek, and that results in compacted soils, bare soils, exposed TRE roots. So life threatening erosion, but kind of minorerosion. It's more of an ecological impact than like a life safety, health safety impact. And then on the south bank, this is where we have much taller banks. And again, the trail is right at the top of the bank, the creek bank. Most of the banks are generally stable and well vegetated, but there are risks of slope failures because of the steepness and height of the banks and with the trail right at the top. And so that's why, you know, we have this bank stabilization project along close to Toomey. So there is a higher risk on the south bank. Two projects that I'll talk about that were landmarks on that map that watershed is [10:13:05 AM] that map that watershed is currently sponsoring Barton creek at sunken gardens. This is a project that is designed to stabilize. This is switched somehow. I think the text got switched or erased. Okay, I'm going to speak through the project objectives, but don't don't read that text. Apologies. So sunken gardens the this is one of the the three main springs around Barton springs. ISIS is similar to a project that watershed completed within the Barton springs pool grounds called Eliza springs. So this is a pro that will stabilize the outfall. The there's an outfall channel from the spring into Barton creek itself. It does go down a tall, steep bank, and we're experiencing some erosion. And eventually that erosion would make its way to this historic structure.the project will stabilize that outfall channel. It will also protect the [10:14:05 AM] It will also protect the historic structures, and it will also increase and improve salamander habitat. Actually, Eliza springs is one of the places where our scientists find the best salamander habitat. So we're hoping to kind of recreate that situation here. Currently we are. We just finished preliminary engineering that just in the fall. So we're reviewing those findings. The project is unfunded from here. So we need about a million and a half for engineering design and project management. And remembering off of what that slide may be used to say, I think it's $7.5 million for construction. So about $9 million, which is unfunded. This is included in our list of bond projects. The next project is this is correct text Barton creek at Toomey bank stabilization. So this picture shows the bank failure that happened that threatened the trail. The trail had had to be closed. And so again, when I talk about erosion, that's a life safety issue. This is one [10:15:07 AM] life safety issue. This is one of those types of projects. So the project objective is pretty straigrward. Stabilize the slope failure, protect the trail infrastructure. Currently we are under construction and plan to finish by the end of this calendar year. The funding obviously we're fully funded. About $1 million went towards engineering services and project management and then $6 million towards construction. I hand it back to Lindsey to talk about the rest. >> Yeah. So I'll touch on two more erosion issues that we've addressed before, talking about other initiatives. The next is Lou Neff point, an emergency repair that we undertook this year. So earlier before the summer, we observed cracking and evidence of structure failures. At the point we worked really closely with our colleagues in watershed protection, as well as the city engineer's office, and hired through an emergency procurement process, a contractor that could come in [10:16:08 AM] contractor that could come in and stabilize the structure through some deep injection and stabilize it and level it. We also worked with our in-house crews to come back and backfill some of the voids with riprap underneath the structure, address cracking at the masonry and concrete at the top, and rounded out that project and finished up in September. We did dedicate some of our Reing 2018 bond fundings to go towards this repair. And next I'll talk about barking springs, which is the area just downstream of the spillway for the pool, and this area is adjacent to sunken gardens. But the area that I'm talking about here does fall outside of the limit of work that we're talking about with the sunken gardens improvement project. It's directly next to it, and there's need in this area to look at safety and sightlines and access the water, but also significantly address the [10:17:09 AM] also significantly address the compaction and erosion and soil health and plant health. So we're looking at scoping restoration activities in this area and short and mid-term goals. We are intending to start looking at easier to accomplish things like invasive removal of trees and vines, some Trimm of the protected trees in the area, and working our way towards soil restoration. So establishing some divine defined pathways through the vegetation to prevent disturbance and preserve some of the soils as we restore it. So we expect that this is going to be not a one time activity, but something that we scope that progressively improves over time. And we hope to utilize some volunteer initiatives to assist with work we define as necessary for this area. So moving on to talk more broadly [10:18:11 AM] moving on to talk more broadly about the park as a whole, I want to touch on how we've been approaching invasive species, invasive species management for the park. And we go about this again in close partnership with watershed protection in a variety of ways that I can give an overview for here. One of the main ways is working with keep Austin beautiful with their existing contract with watershed protection to manage the adopt a creek program. And so through that program, creek adopters can bring forward their proposals for ecological restoration and invasive species removal projects. It is vetted through watershed protection and Austin parks and recreation staff, and we also coordinate volunteer workdays through the partnership volunteer intake portal. When we're working on those efforts that are either proposed by keep Austin beautiful or where we have other priorities, we'll sometimes also bring in and work with Austin civilian [10:19:12 AM] work with Austin civilian conservation corps crews, which we also have a contract with the city for. And that might be in some instances where volunteer labor is not quite enough to accomplish all the goals. We might need more heavy machinery that volunteers can't quite use, or have a more broad scope that needs to be accomplished. And so in those cases, we'll bring in crews and assist with that. And one other example I'll mention is specifically work that is underway, sponsored by Austin parks foundation, which is a three year plan that has been proposed and approved for Barton creek greenbelt. Trail maintenance and ecological restoration. And this is a plan more broadly for Barton creek. But some of the work falls within the limits of zilker park itself. And like I mentioned, that's a three year plan with various stages that are submitted through the community activated park project portal and reviewed as the plan goes forward to implementation. >> Before we go to the next slide, Gail, is that you in [10:20:13 AM] slide, Gail, is that you in that picture, we have one of the volunteers here, and I just want to take a moment to thank her for her work in this area and in our parks. Just we can never have enough volunteers. So wanted to just a quick shout out. Thank you very much. Sorry. >> No worries. Thank you. All right. Next I'll talk about some TRE planting and give you two examples of TRE planting projects that have been happening this year. The first is the pecan grove picnic area. This is TRE planting. In addition to soil and drainage improvements, we planted 18 new trees with the associated irrigation to help them establish. Over the over three years. We also did some significant soil compaction. This was pretty compacted, gravelly, degraded soil. We broke up that hard pack in order to help these trees have better opportunity for success. And we also did some grading and drainage improvements to allow some of the runoff from [10:21:13 AM] allow some of the runoff from the adjacent parking lot to have more opportunity to infiltrate into the grassy area before making its way to Barton creek. This TRE planting project was funded by the council resolution, which was the budget amendmentthe fy 25 budget that allocated urban forestry replenishment funding to TRE planting on park land and specifically named zilker park, is one of the recipients. The other example I'll share is an externally led project, which is a TRE treatment. I think I'm saying that right project, that is, if you can tell by the picture on the side there is near the violet crown trailhead. It's kind of hard to tell because it's just a TRE covered area you're seeing, but it's pretty close to that trailhead area. And the scope of the work that's being conducted this fall is removal of some of the invasive ligustrum. And in that clearing space, going back and planting these stands of trees that [10:22:16 AM] these stands of trees that combine understory and overstory canopy together, intending to kind of mimic the way that natural TRE stands grow. And so that work is funded by Austin parks foundation and zilker. 351 and those projects are ongoing. I think the the original area for the work was 3000ft !S. I think it's since been expanded and it's doubled to 6000ft !S of that work that's happening in that area. All right. Now I'll run through a sampling of other capital improvement projects that we have ongoing in zilker park as well. Firstly, the zilker clubhouse rehabilitation is a historic restion and preservation project of this facility, and the outcome will be that we'll have flexibility of the site and able to host many different types of events and groups going forward into the future. That's reached the [10:23:16 AM] the future. That's reached the end of the design phase, and we're Abt to be in the bidding phase, so expecting that bidding to happen sometime this fall or sometime soon, of course, you know, the Joan means bathhouse rehabilitation project has been underway for some time and is planning for a partial opening this fall. And the newly C completed restroom portion will open as soon as possible. The project also includes, as you also probably know, but new educational exhibit that will provide opportunities to learn about the watershed and the aquifer and preserving the salamander habitat as well. Two more projects we have are the zilker maintenance barn that is back under construction now and slated for completion sometime in mid 2026. So spring summer, a couple highlights of this project to make you aware of is. Well, firstly of course it's [10:24:16 AM] Well, firstly of course it's the primary maintenance facility for the crews that maintain zilker park. The scope includes pilot electrical equipment to house electric lawn equipment, and we are incorporating that into the design now and making the provisions for having the right electrical infrastructure to operate that pilot. There's also going to be some TRE planting as part of the mitigation that's necessary for the construction. That's going to happen within the park as well. And lastly, miles, mile zero trailhead, which is nearing completion of construction as well. It's led by the hill country nservancy, funded by parks and recreation, hill country conservancy and Austin parks foundat the final stages of the project are happening now. Tree planting is is happening, as well as the final rain garden installation that's located off of Andrews road, sort of outside of where the trailhead itself is. And the grand opening for that is scheduled for November 15th of [10:25:16 AM] scheduled for November 15th of this year, so concluding very soon. And lastly, I'll round out this discussion by talking a little bit about parking and shuttle operations for the park and specifically recap of the performance for the shuttle this summer. So, as you likely know, we've been progressively working towards parking demand management and minimizing parking on the environally sensitive polo fields as much as possible and making progress over time to. Make that impact less and less. This past year, the polo field parking operation was reduced to 50% of the total parking space and was open onl on weekends and for events. And as a management tool. We implemented this zilker loop, which is the shuttle that runs from the Stratford drive lot. And this year it saw just over 7000 riders. It operated from [10:26:18 AM] riders. It operated from memorial day through labor day on Saturdays and Sundays, and that figure of 7000 riders was roughly comparable to the numbers we saw in 2024, when we were operating the external shuttle that was going from one Texas center into the park. So this year, the shuttling from Stratford lot was coupled with two hour free validation, which we're seeing as an effective strategy to direct people to parking in that to be able to access the pool and other portions of the park. I also want to point out that some other evidence of success we had in this strategy was there was some wet times. It's hard to remember when things were wet, but earlier this year there was some times where the conditions of the polo fields were tooet to keep open, and those were closed fully. And on those times with the two bus internal loop, we were successfully able to absorb visitors. And we had some of the highest ridership numbers of the shuttle during those [10:27:19 AM] of the shuttle during those times. So we look forward to continuing to utilize this shuttle strategy and make progress towards reducing parking in the polo fields. So that rounds out the content we have to share with you today, but happy to take any questions you have about this work. >> Thank you very much. Any. >> I could. >> Come up with one. >> Only if you have it. >> Yeah, it's a very thorough presentation. I appreciate all of all of the robust information that's that's being brought there. You know, and it's not lost on any of us, especially those of us up here that, you kno S some of the issues in the park, like erosion control, transportation issues and, and shade, the lack of shade that's been there over the years is just something that I think I can speak for chair alter in this moment, but we kind of said those will need to bdressed at some point because we've got such great issues. But I'll switch gears into the mention of the clubhouse itself. I know there's been some issues with [10:28:19 AM] there's been some issues with underage folks hanging out there over the evening hours, and I'm just curious if there's any other safety improvements planned for that project before the the improvements get underway. It's been something that's, you know, almost too often, I'll just say too often we're getting outreach because there's there's folks that are utilizing it without having a reservation and without respecting the space. So I didn't know if safety improvements were a part of the clubhouse revitalization. >> Yeah, I can talk a little bit about that, and I'm happy to have any of the others, assistant director or director chime in if I've missed anything. But I know we are aware of the issue and are working with our, oh, working with our maintenance team to iment some security improvements in the short term to make sure that we're shoring up security and access. Looking at rekeying of the facility, ultimately as additional safety improvements and putting bollards and and pieces of infrastructure to help secure [10:29:19 AM] infrastructure to help secure the facility in the short term, but also incorporate some of that into the project scope long term. Do you want to add anything? >> No, actually, Lindsey covered it. Everything. I have to say that the recent vandalism that we had last weekend was quite extensive and very disheartening, but we are trying to implement both short term and long term improvements. But. We will do our best. >> I appreciate it. I know there's some neighbors that have some very creative ideas that I think could be helpful in this conversation to help protect that space. It seems like most other clubhouses in rec centers that are part of the parks department are either just less accessible, or it's easier to shut them down, close them off, and people can't access them. And for some reason, it seems like this is where some of the teenagers are deciding to spend their time and not making great decisions. And I just hate to see our public assets become inaccessible to other folks that do want to respect that [10:30:20 AM] that do want to respect that space.nd I appreciate we've had some conversations with parks and recreation staff over the past couple of weeks about opening up that conversation with our police officers. We know that they are doing some re strategizing with their patrol units and trying to provide better coverage within our park system. We just don't know exactly what that looks like, what times of day, and where can people be be able to access these properties or be cut off from accessing them if they're going to be vandalizing some of our public properties? So I look forward to seeing how that conversation unfolds. >> Thank. We will. >> Any any questions? I, I wanted to go back to slide eight. And just better understand, you know, both in the Barton springs master plan as well as some of the community conversation around the proposed vision plan, really highlighted the erosion that you talked about on both [10:31:21 AM] that you talked about on both sides. And I think you touched on, you know, there are kind of two elements here. There's the life safety of someone actually, you know, falling in or something, falling on somebody. But then also the ecological impacts, what plans do we have for th spillway here into lady bird lake? Do we have projects that are planned but unfunded? Do we need to do the planning? Where are we in that stage so that we can have more dedicated access points so people aren't just walking over wherever they want and continuing that erosion? >> So, I mean, I think just to maybe one that's a really clear example is the sunken gardens rehabilitation project, which is ending the preliminary engineering report stage and is in need of funding for both the [10:32:22 AM] in need of funding for both the design phase through construction drawings and the construction as well. And that project does include some shoreline improvements in addition to kind of the channel repair itself as well as the interpretive elements. So I think that's one really clear example that is in progress and is in need of funding. I think, as you know, in the area immediately adjacent that we talked about with the barking springs, I think our current plans in terms of short and mid-term efforts are a lighter touch and doing what we can with the limited resources we have for that area and the limited ability we have to make longer term plans and decisions about the area. So sort of upkeeping with the maintenance and making improvements within those constraints that we have. So I would say that that's generally speaking, going to beour approach. I don't know if you want to add to that. [10:33:24 AM] you want to add to that. >> Yeah, I think I can when just from a watershed perspective, our projects are driven by our strategic plan, which asks us to address the worst problems first, which is generally the life safety issues. So when something elevates through our strategic plan prioritization, then we're allocating funding to both sunken gardens and Toomey bank stabilization are examples of those. I think we would love to be partners in a kind of a creek wide vision plan that address some of these issues ecologically for water quality is also part of our mission area. So and I think that it's at the end of the day, a planning issue and a funding issue. Yeah. >> And, you know, we we had this conversation a very different context just here about maintenance versus replacement. You know, we have the the embankment failure. You know, what kind of cost differential is there of doing the the preventative work along [10:34:25 AM] the the preventative work along the embankment versus what the cost of the embankment failure fix? >> Sure. That project in its entirety, I think was around 8 million, 7 million in general, like per linear foot of stream stabilization, you're looking at 1000 to $2000 per linear foot. So things in we are typically addressing problems when the bank has gotten so close to a threatened resource. Or is is a safety issue that we don't have a lot of space to work in. So our as as much as we try to create ecological uplift with our projects, a lot of it is hard armoring. So I look at the limestone blocks here in this room. You know, to me, being stabilization is generally that we really try to soften it up with a toe that has some vegetation opportunities. But for the most part, I don't think that watershed or the community necessarily wants to see that type of treatment along the [10:35:27 AM] type of treatment along the length of, of the bank. So what stabilization looks like without that is, is there's not really like a proactive way to handle it besides just setting the trail back, which again is a space issue. >> Yeah. Okay. Well I think, you know, we are having the conversation around the entirety of entirety of the city's needs as it relates to the bond. And if there are planning needs for this area, you know, having those dollars incorporated so that we can plan this area. But, you know, I would love to have as light a touch natural systems put in place, but that do direct people to this is where you feed the turtles, you know, this is where you can access and not continue to have the type of harms that we're doing to that area, whether they be life, safety or ecological. So we'll continue to to talk and work together on what, what we [10:36:28 AM] work together on what, what we need to to see this through. But I'd hate to wait another six years and be talking about this have just gotten worse when we could have done the right, more, more cost effective things now. So really appreciate that presentation. And if there are no other questions, we will move on. Thank you all so much. Thank you. All right. We will move on to item number four a briefing on Austin water strategic plan and see some familiar faces return. We will. Sorry to to leave you 23 minutes but I trust you can do it. >> Absolutely. Good morningagain, Austin water director Shea Ralls roalson and I have our enterprise strategic planning manager, Allison Sprague, here with us today. And we will give you a high [10:37:28 AM] And we will give you a high level overview of the work that we've been doing on our strategic plan update. And so we'll just get right into it. All right. >> Well good morning. >> Thank you so much for the opportunity to be here today to give you this update on our enterprise strategic plan for Austin water. I'm Alison Sprague, enterprise strategic planning manager. Today I'm going to walk you through the why the what the intention, the process that we did to undertake a refreshing of our plan, a little bit about our project, our timeline, all the engagement work that we did, as well as the resultant goals, strategies and how we're aligning to citywide priorities as well as our next steps. So the why, why we refreshed our strategic plan. Our previous plan at Austin water was developed and published in and around the year 2020. And as we all know, life has changed quite a bit. The world has changed quite a bit a bit. Since then. We've had a global pandemic, we've had extreme weather events, we've had external evaluations at Austin [10:38:30 AM] external evaluations at Austin water, and so we really wanted to refresh our guiding document for Austin water to better reflect our evolving environment, taking into account climate change population growth, workforce concerns, as well as really engage with our community and staff to understand what their priorities are for, for where, where and what we should be working on. Of note as well is that we do a lot of strategic planning at Austin water. You heard from my colleagues earlier as well. A lot of long term planning efforts are underway, but this is really the first time that we were intentional about engaging with our community and staff to understand their priorities and what's important to them. So what this new plan will do. This is an enterprise wide plan for Austin water. We are viewing this document as a blueprint for us, a decision making framework, a great communications tool. It really outlines everything that is important to us and that will be working on in the coming years. It helps build connections. We've seen that [10:39:32 AM] connections. We've seen that already in all of our engagement activities with staff in the community. It really enables us to share our knowledge and expertise and really helps us incorporate and align all of our existing plans. You all are familiar with water forward, drought contingency or long range facilities planning that you heard from this morning. And so we now have a direct line of sight into our high level goals, into all of our existing work that's already been going on. And most importantly, or lastly, it's it's long range and flexible. This plan is going to allow us to scale up, scale down, depending on what's going on around us and how we need to respond to things that are happening. So our intention with this process going in, we wanted to be thoughtful, flexible, transparent, really sharing results along the way, engaging with staff and community in annclusive way. We wanted to consider input from all levels of our organization, our customers, the community, viewing it through an equity lens, ensuring climate resilience is addressed as well as making it [10:40:32 AM] addressed as well as making it accessible and informative. So we knew we couldn't do that alone. At the time it was myself and a team of two, so we needed to engage. We knew we wanted to engage, help to help facilitate us through this process. So we engaged with blue sky partners, a local consulting firm here in Austin who helped us design our process and guided us through over the last year. Plus, what we ended up doing was essentially a ground up process where we engaged with all levels of Austin water, the community we serve. We did this through a variety of methods and tactics. We held focus groups, we launched surveys, we had listening sessions with staff, and blue sky guided us along the way. We really dug into this project. Over the last 14 months. We spent the majority of last fall planning, outlining our phases, our deliverables. After we came back from the holidays in January, we launched our staff engagement phase. We launched a [10:41:33 AM] engagement phase. We launched a survey out to Austin water staff. We held listening sessions. We also stood up a strategic steering committee, made up of internal subject matter experts from across Austin water. From there, we moved into our community engagement phase again, launching surveys, holding listening sessions before bringing all of that back and really disseminating the infoion, filtering the feedback that we got, developing our goals, strategies and looking at alignment to broader citywide priorities. So we did quite a bit of engagement on the employee outreach side. Like I said, we launched surveys. We went out and met with teams on all shifts, all hours, encouraging them to take our survey. We held leadership workshops, we held listening sessions. We provided avenues for folks to anonymously provide us information. And on the community side, we launched a speak up Austin page where we invited folks to take our survey. We sent out a portal [10:42:34 AM] survey. We sent out a portal message on my atx water with our survey link, as well as offered opportunities for the community to attend listening sesessions both in-person and virtual. So we were incredibly pleased with the amount of engagement that we got through these efforts. As you'll see on the customer and community side, we had over 3000 responses to our survey that enabled us to hold in- person and virtual listening sessions. And we heard we're able to hear from 60 community participants across those sessions. All council districts were represented as well. We looked at participants and invited them based on council, their council districts, household income levels, race and other demographic fac to ensure we had a diverse group in every session to listen to. And on the staff side again, we had a great response to our survey. [10:43:35 AM] great response to our survey. We had 575 responses that translated into five additional listening sessions with staff. We had over 60 staff attend those. We had 20 plus folks on our steering committee. And over the course of the last 14 months as well, we held ten leadership workshops. So all levels of our of our leaders, from supervisors to division managers to managers and executive team all engaging with this feedback and viewing, you know, all the priorities that were that were coming through that feedback phase. So really what that resulted in is we really needed to take a hard look at essentially the fundamental purpose of our organization. And we felt the need that it was time. And with all this feedback, to revise our mission vision and develop goals for the organization at an enterprise level. So we did revise our mission. Our new mission statement reads, Austin water works every day to provide water for people and care for the environment. Our [10:44:35 AM] care for the environment. Our vision statement reads. Building Austin's water future together.really feel like those are clear, concise and encompass everything that we do at Austin water. Now, in order to achieve this mission and this vision, we we needed to develop goals. We developed five high level goals for the organization within this plan. The first one really focusing on creating a thriving team at Austin water. This goal is is create a people first culture. We have got a couple strategies under under this goal, we're going to focus in on culture, ensuring employees at every level feel valued, supported training. We're going to empower a skilled workforce that's both skill driven training as well as professional and leadership development, focusing in on employee care, making sure our policies and procedures align with our employees well-being safety. We're also going to focus in on internal communication and engagement, providing opportunities for [10:45:36 AM] providing opportunities for feedback within the organization, and inform our staff and as much as possible as the organization evolves. And also focusing in on technical depth, ensuring that we're strengthening pathways to create generation of of new Austin water professionals. Our second goal is focusing in on service excellence. This is deliver high quality and sustainable water, wastewater and environmental services for our customers. Expanding on technical depth, we're also going to focus on technical expertise. So this is our knowledge, our research, our leadership that we have already at the forefront of our industry, but making sure that we are focusing in on and leveraging that within our organization, focusing on enterprise performance as well, integrating all of our couous improvement efforts across ttility into one framework. Knowledge sharing. Very important that we are documenting and expanding access to all of that technical [10:46:37 AM] access to all of that technical depth and expertise that we have, as well as resource management. So really focusing on developing and implementing diverse and environmentally conscious strategies to prepare for the future, to ensure we have that service excellence. Our third goal is in and around proactive infrastructure. Our goal is to invest in and maintain dependable infrastructure and systems. You'll rally saw that at work earlier in this meeting with my colleagues, presenting on all of the capital improvement projects, facilities, projects. Know, we have an incredibly complex and robust cip planning process, and this is us being forward looking. So you got a glimpse into the strategy at work today. That is us balancing routine maintenance with long term system demands. We're going to leverage smart systems, data technology, really focusing in on future ready sustainability. You know, building resilient systems that are adaptable to population growth, climate change, and then also have an element and a strategy focused around [10:47:39 AM] strategy focused around incremental escalation. This is us being able to scale up and down in emergency events or other events that may happen to meet the scope of each situation. Okay, finally, we're going to focus in on our community. You know, we did a lot of engagement with them. We want to make sure we're fostering public confidence and preparedness and partnerships. You know, really, since winter storm uri, we've really engaged with the public and building partnerships, ensuring they're prepared for the future. So we want to continue being a trusted partner, continue our community engagement efforts, ensuring we have equitable service delivery and cost effectiveness for all. Focusing in on strategic communications, you know, not just short term service disruptions, but also our long term priorities like conservation and then continue being a community steward, preparing and preserving our resources for the future. And finally, we're going to take off some water next level. We're going to drive innovation [10:48:40 AM] We're going to drive innovation to improve effectiveness and responsibly manage risks. So, you know, this is us focusing in on data quality. We want to make informed, data driven decisions. We need good data to do that. We want to foster innovation mindset. We want to amline high frequency processes, modernize our toolkits, and really bring in scenario planning in order to be prepared for the future. So within all of that, within all of these high level goals, we feel like there's a very direct and clear line of sight to broader citywide priorities, both citywide strategic plan and imagine Austin as a whole, and all of the different long range plans that we have at Austin water again creates that line of sight as well. We feel like every goal that we have developed within this plan aligns to one of the citywide strategic planning goals and priorities as well. At a granular level, you can see how we've aligned this here and really next steps. You know, we've we've done a tremendous amount of work to develop this plan for the enterprise and for [10:49:41 AM] plan for the enterprise and for Austin water. And now we really need to implement it. Right. So we're socializing the plan both to Austin water staff, but also city leadership D the community. We'll continue alignment work. We'll continue looking in at all of our plans. Projects continue to align tighter budget processing and resourcing to make sure that we're moving forward and making progress on these goals. We'll continue identifying gaps, and most importantly, we'll we'll track track that progress. Taking a look into our kpis and performance measures to make sure we can measure progress. And most importantly, we're going to work the plan. So with that, I'll open us up to any questions. >> Questions questions. >> No questions. But I'll just say the communication that y'all have been able to have with constituents has been extremely helpful. I know nobody ever wants to have to have a water utility repair and have to have their water turned off for a period of time, but [10:50:41 AM] off for a period of time, but y'all have been able to make sure that we know so that we can put it in our newsletter, reach out to the constituents that will be affected. And then y'all's follow up hast been really good over the years. And so I know that's a critical component to this, this strategic plan. And just want to say thanks and extend my appreciation to the whole team. >> Thank you. We appreciate our partnership. >> Yes. Well, very thorough work as always. No surprise there. But appreciate the work y'all are doing. >> Thank you so much. >> All right. Well, we made it. I know nine minutes to spare. So we we do have future items. If anybody has any future items, you're always you know where to find me. But I really appreciate the conversation today. We have no meeting in November. Oh. Yeah. >> Nothing that. >> Unless they want. >> To present it. No. >> Okay. So we will be back [10:51:43 AM] >> Okay. So we will be back here in December. I hope it's cold by thenwe shall see. I hope it's rained by then. We shall see. But until then, if there is nothing else, I will adjourn our meeting at 1052. Thank you guys. Very.