Woodway will start a $945,000 project next month to expand water service capacity in an area seeing new residential development.
The Woodway City Council unanimously approved a $945,000 contract Monday for Waco-based H&B Contractors to replace a 6-inch line with a 12-inch PVC line along Ritchie Road, Old McGregor Road and Oak Ridge Drive. The project area will run along Ritchie from Highway 84, near First Woodway Baptist Church, to Old McGregor, where it will turn toward Waco and continue to Oak Ridge, said Mitch Davison, the city’s community services and development director. It will run along Oak Ridge to Ridge Point Drive, where it will tie into the existing water system.
“We will have a pre-construction meeting with the contractor next week, because they want to get started,” Davison said. “The project should take seven months to substantial completion and eight months until total completion.”
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The contract, funded by the city’s allotment of federal American Rescue Plan Act money, includes repaving portions of Ritchie and Oak Ridge that will be dug up to install the line. During the work on Ritchie and Oak Ridge, traffic will be squeezed into a smaller width of roadway. Along Old McGregor, the pipe will be installed outside the footprint of the roadway, so there will be less impact to traffic there, Davison said.
The old 6-inch pipe being replaced will remain in service until the the new pipe is completely installed and pressurized, so tap water will remain drinkable.
“There should only be a service interruption of a few minutes at the very end when switching over from the old pipe to the new pipe,” Davison said. “Then the contract calls for the old pipe to be capped and abandoned in the ground.”
Davison said staff recommended this project to the city council now because it was one of several put forth in a 2021 water system masterplan.
“As we grow, this area of town needs additional capacity for both pressure and volume,” Davison said.
On the opposite side Old McGregor from the Oak Ridge neighborhood is the Tanglewood subdivision, which is partially built out and where more new homes are planned. The area of Woodway served by the new line is in a fast-growing area of the county.
Final design was done by the Waco-based Walker Partners engineering firm at a cost of about $250,000, also paid with American Rescue Plan Act money.
The bid from H&B Contractors came in $781,000 less than the engineer’s cost estimate, but Walker Partners recommended H&B because the firm has shown itself to be reliable in completing a number of utility projects in and around Waco, according to a letter from project engineer Kyle Dunlop.
After the water line replacement, Woodway will have about $1 million remaining from its American Rescue Plan Act allotment. In addition to money state and municipal governments nationwide can use for a range of local projects, the $1.9 trillion measure signed into law in March 2021 included money for COVID-19 testing and vaccines, and direct $1,400 payments to most Americans. It also extended emergency boosts to unemployment benefits and expanded tax breaks for people with children, among other elements.
Davison will present a plan to the city council this summer on possibilities for how Woodway will use its remaining money from the measure.
He said he expects potential projects to include pump station refits and repainting of water storage tanks, as recommended in the city’s water masterplan.
Woodway’s water system gets most of its supply from six city-owned wells. It also supplements its groundwater supply with treated Lake Waco water it buys from the city of Waco.
WATCH NOW: The city of Waco is about a quarter of the way through a mission to track down any remaining lead water lines. City utility crews will open up the water meter, vacuum out the debris and determine the material of the pipe in a process that takes about 5 to 10 minutes, a city official said. (June 2023)
