Austin Water plant finally gets long-overdue go-ahead

An editorial from the Austin American Statesman

The Austin City Council finally found unanimity on continuing construction on a third water treatment plant an issue that consumed an inordinate amount of time, money and attention.

Although designated Water Treatment Plant 4, the facility under construction at RM 620 and RM 2222 would be Austin's third operational water treatment plant. It is scheduled for completion in 2014, but if plant opponents had their way, that date would have been pushed back. Better yet, in their view, the plant would have been scrapped.

Aggressive water conservation would mitigate the need for a new plant was one argument. Austinites have embraced water conservation — as we will discuss Monday — but won't obviate the need for more treatment capacity. As we have noted on previous occasions, the numbers that plant opponents blithely ignored were 1954 and 1969 — the years that the city's two operational water treatment plants went online. The life span of such infrastructure is 50 years, or so say water professionals.

But as the American-Statesman's Marty Toohey reported Thursday, the seven-member council is now in full agreement that shutting down or delaying plant construction would cost too much. The city already has more than $300 million tied up in the plant. Delaying construction or stopping it altogether would easily cost the city more than $100 million.

It took a study and review by the city auditor to explain that obvious fact of life to council members who were obviously looking for a different answer. Council Member Bill Spelman, for instance, said when the council voted on the resolution to study the costs associated with postponing further construction that they could be contained to say, $5 million to $10 million, and the amount would be an acceptable trade-off. Eating $5 million to $10 million is considered a modest snack at City Hall, apparently.

No one with even passing knowledge of construction and contract law expected the number to be that low, but city staffers went through the exercise and returned to the council with an estimate north of $100 million — an amount that even the most ardent of plant opponents couldn't ignore or explain away.

The number should finally put an end to the argument over the need for another treatment plant. Long before the advent of the 24-hour news cycle, though, Austin's players in municipal politics had developed, nurtured and sustained the 25-year civic debate. It has been at least 25 years since the proposal to build Water Treatment Plant 4 was first aired. Two years ago, the council finally took a vote, and the plant was narrowly approved, 4-3.

The defeat of Randi Shade in the spring council elections revived opponents' hopes of killing the plant.

Spelman offered a resolution that moved in that direction, but Mayor Pro Tem Sheryl Cole engineered a compromise that included the study of the costs of delaying the plant that produced a convincing fiscal argument to move ahead. Given the circumstances, it was an adroit move, but one that would have been unnecessary but for City Hall's appetite for never-ending debate, discussion and delay.

The unanimous support for the plant is long overdue, but nonetheless welcome.

"I still don't believe we should have started" construction, Spelman told Toohey. "But here we are halfway through building it, and I think we should finish."

Indeed, it's way past time to close the debate and move toward opening the plant.