The Whitewright City Council has taken the next step toward completing long-delayed improvements to the city’s wastewater treatment plant by approving the issuance process for certificates of obligation that will help fund the project.
The council approved the initial step last week, beginning the legal process required before the financing can be finalized.
The city will publish public notices for two consecutive weeks before holding a public hearing in September, when the certificates of obligation are expected to be officially issued.
The financing will allow the city to move forward with a wastewater treatment plant improvement project that has been in development for several years.
“This is a wastewater treatment plant improvement plan that has been in the design phase and approved for funding by the council that was seated in 2023,” Mayor Sarah Beth Owen said.
Rather than constructing a new facility, the project will expand and rehabilitate the existing wastewater treatment plant by adding new treatment components while upgrading aging infrastructure.
According to project engineer David Perkins of Kimley-Horn, the project is designed to address one of the city’s most persistent infrastructure challenges.
“The city has a fairly significant I&I problem,” Perkins said. “The current project was intended to modify the plant to better deal with the I&I without upsetting the ongoing treatment process.”
I&I, or inflow and infiltration, occurs when excessive stormwater enters the sanitary sewer system during heavy rains, sending more water to the treatment plant than it was designed to handle.
Perkins said the project will add a new disc filter and clarifier to increase the plant’s peak flow capacity during storm events while providing the redundancy needed to repair the existing clarifier, which currently cannot be taken offline for maintenance.
The project has experienced multiple delays before reaching the construction stage.
According to Owen, the city completed the bidding process once before, but the bids were disqualified because there were too few qualified submissions and problems with the bid tabulation process, forcing the city to rebid the entire project.
The delays also resulted in significantly higher construction costs.
The certificates of obligation will provide approximately $2 million in additional financing, including a contingency fund to cover potential unforeseen construction costs.
To repay the debt, Whitewright will establish an interest and sinking (I&S) tax rate while continuing its existing maintenance and operations (M&O) tax rate.
Owen said the new I&S tax rate will be 6.79 cents per $100 of taxable valuation, which equates to $67.90 annually for a $100,000 taxable property, or about $5.66 per month, for property owners whose taxes are not frozen.
The tax will remain in place for the life of the bond.
Owen said moving forward with the project is critical because it is tied to existing financing through the Texas Water Development Board, including more than $3 million in 0% financing and debt forgiveness secured as part of the original funding package.
The project also serves as the city’s ongoing response to concerns from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality regarding inflow and infiltration.
“We’ve been holding this project as our defense with TCEQ while it’s being designed and completed,” Owen said. “If the city did not move forward with this project, we would no longer be able to use this as a defense when it comes to TCEQ.”
Perkins said the city’s overflow issues are not new.
“The I&I issues and the overflows which occur at the plant have been an ongoing issue for at least 10 years,” he said.
The existing wastewater treatment plant was built in 1916 and has not be updated since 1970.
Owen said abandoning the project could have serious financial consequences.
She said the city would remain responsible for bonds already issued, lose favorable financing and debt forgiveness through the Texas Water Development Board, and could face enforcement action from TCEQ.
“They could institute significant fines on the city for any I&I incidents, as well as force the city to build a new plant,” Owen said.
She estimated a replacement wastewater treatment plant could cost more than $25 million, substantially more than completing the current improvements.
Perkins agreed that delaying the work would likely prove more expensive.
“It is my opinion that if the city elects not to do the bond and supplement the budget at this time, they need to plan on paying substantial fines to the TCEQ or prepare for some sort of order to fix it in the future,” Perkins said. “The cost of treatment equipment and the labor qualified to install it is going up substantially and has since 2020. Two or three years from now this project is not a $7 million project — it is probably a $9 million project.”
Once financing is finalized in September, the council is expected to formally award the construction contract. The project will then require final approval from the Texas Water Development Board, a process Owen said typically takes 60 to 90 days before construction can begin.
Owen said the wastewater treatment plant improvements are one of several major infrastructure projects her administration has worked to advance after taking office. She noted that bringing the city’s financial audits up to date was necessary before the Texas Water Development Board would approve the project.
“We worked diligently to try to get that across the finish line because it was holding up numerous projects,” Owen said.
Source: Freepik.com