Monday, January 10, 2011

“UPDATES: Hickory Aquifer in full swing”

“UPDATES: Hickory Aquifer in full swing”

UPDATES: Hickory Aquifer in full swing

Posted: 09 Jan 2011 08:05 PM PST

SAN ANGELO, Texas — With the approval of a $120 million low-interest loan in December, the Hickory Aquifer project is in full swing.

Water Utilities Director Will Wilde said the fastest-moving part of the project is the construction of the pipeline that is expected to carry groundwater into San Angelo by 2014.

The water will be treated at a new treatment plant that will be constructed near the city's existing plant.

Wilde said the pipeline design is more than 60 percent complete and the city has moved into the final stages of negotiating right-of-way acquisitions for easements with about a dozen landowners in Tom Green and Concho counties.

"We anticipate or are planning on bidding the pipeline part of the project, I would say, around the May time frame," Wilde said.

Wilde said the city doesn't have a price tag for right-of-way acquisitions because the city land manager is still working with the individual landowners "to come up with the market value of acquiring easements."

The other major part of the project, which Wilde is heading, is the construction of the treatment plant.

Wilde said the city is still a few months away from designing the plant because it has not finished collecting data on the water from a pilot plant near Melvin. The main issue with the groundwater is high radiation, but it also contains a high iron content.

Wilde said the data collection will be complete by the end of January.

"Once we have that information, then they can proceed into designing the actual treatment plant itself," Wilde said. "The most important is the removal of the radiation. There also is the iron, the water has high levels of iron, which will also be removed, but they're not one of the primary drinking water standards."

The 27,800-acre aquifer is about 60 miles southeast of San Angelo under McCulloch, Menard and Concho counties. The supply is expected to last at least 50 years.

City Hall renovation moving on schedule

The multimillion-dollar renovation of historic City Hall is well under way, but the project looks messier than it actually is.

That's because the city Water Department is replacing old, corroded water mains and extending sewer and stormwater lines around the 1920s-era edifice and the building next door to it, known as the "old health" building or "old library" building, which was constructed around the same time as City Hall and also undergoing renovation.

The main installations have resulted in the intermittent closure of Irving Street between West Harris Avenue and West College Avenue — the street that runs in front of City Hall.

Water Utilities Director Will Wilde said the main replacements were part of the city's water main replacement program and that it was scheduled to coincide with the City Hall project.

"It was an area we had definitely targeted for line replacement, and it was a good opportunity with the City Hall remodeling to get that completed before City Hall would be done," Wilde said.

Wilde said water customers in the area, including the First Presbyterian Church on Irving Street, had been having problems with rusty water.

"The old 4- and 6-inch mains in the area have really bad rust problems and were providing poor service to the area," Wilde said. "They were continually having poor water-quality problems, so that's what's happening is replacing the old rusty mains and providing new service for the City Hall project."

Wilde said the work should be completed in about a month. It is one of a series of main replacement projects in the downtown area. In the middle of last year, mains were installed in the Concho Avenue area downtown.

"This is kind of just the same: We're replacing a lot of these mains in the downtown because they are in such poor condition," Wilde said. "They're old cast-iron lines that have extreme rust corrosion inside, and we're seeing a lot of metal fatigue and failure where we're having leaks on those lines."

David Knapp, construction manager for the City Hall renovation, said it made sense to do the water line replacements now even though it "made a big mess all at once."

"The city had plans to do some work out there anyway. There are some old lines," Knapp said.

Knapp said the actual renovation will not result in any road closures other than First Street, which will remain closed for the duration of the project.

Knapp said the renovation is on track to be complete by August. Crews have begun repairing the stone exterior of City Hall, as well as the brick exterior of the old library building and electrical and plumbing work. Walls on all three floors, not including the ground floor, have been framed.

"I think it's ticking along fine," Knapp said, noting that crews have begun to put sheet rock on some of the walls. "They've got scaffolding all along the building now, so they're really moving ahead with cleaning and repairing the exterior stone and as well as the brick" on the old health building.

City's development services combined

As City Hall and the old health building are renovated, the city is moving forward with plans to develop the surrounding area into a bustling municipal complex.

In October, the San Angelo City Council approved the consolidation of several divisions in the city's now nonexistent development services department and the city of San Angelo Development Corp. (COSADC) — the city's half-cent-sales-tax-funded economic-development entity. The intent was to move all economic-development-related services out of development services and under a new economic-development division.

The new Community and Economic Development Department includes an economic development section, which provides staff support to COSADC and performs other business development services, as well as a community development section, which includes divisions that were previously in the development services department, including permits and inspections, planning, engineering services, geographic information services and fire prevention. The COSADC director position was eliminated as part of the consolidation. Another new department, Neighborhood and Family Services, will include WIC, housing support services and code compliance.

This department, as well as most of the community section of the Community and Economic Development Department and part of the Health Department will be in the old health building. In September, the San Angelo City Council approved $655,000 for the purchase of the old Coca-Cola bottling building at North Chadbourne and First streets, where the city hopes to locate the economic development section of the department.

Shawn Lewis, director of the new department who served as interim director of COSADC before the consolidation, said the Coca-Cola building would house the economic development section and the Business Resource Center, a space for the city's economic development partners like the Angelo State University Small Business Development Center.

However, Lewis said the purchase of the Coca-Cola building is not a done deal yet because the city has until March to inspect the building and determine how much it will cost to renovate it.

"We're in the due diligence period," Lewis said. "We are also just coming up with cost estimates on renovations to the building to see if it's even economically viable to purchase the building for our intended use. If that price tag comes in exorbitantly high, we'll get out and find another building. So it's not a done deal, but the city manager is authorized to close on the property on or before March."

If the city finalizes the purchase, Lewis said the goal is to move forward with the renovation design after March and bid the project out for construction in the summer and start construction "as soon as possible."

"Basically those two buildings will be your one-stop shop, and they'll be adjoining buildings with the economic development office in one and development functions in other one," Lewis said.

But "the physical consolidation won't take place until City Hall is completed," Lewis said. "When that building is completed and the Business Resource Center is complete, then the physical consolidation of all of these various staff members will take place, which I think will be when the public sees the most benefit ... when we have a true one-stop shop for community and economic development."

As part of the consolidation, COSADC will take over the business incubation services formerly performed by the Concho Valley Center for Entrepreneurial Development.

The two entities finalized the agreement on Jan. 2. Former CVCED Director Donna Osborne became the city's economic development coordinator under the new department on Jan. 3.

Although most internal components of the consolidation already have occurred, Lewis said the public won't notice much difference until the relocation.

However, he said the consolidation already has helped the process of business recruiting by helping business owners deal with zoning changes, permitting and other tasks "earlier in the process."

"What happened before was economic development staff would be recruiting businesses and making economic development deals and then development services would come in too late in the process and create surprises for companies with regard to development regulations that caused problems," Lewis said.

"Now, we're dealing with regulation issues at the front end, so there are no surprises once the company is ready to start building buildings or expanding their operations. The benefits of that coordination have surpassed our expectations already."

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