Last week's City Council hearing on next year’s budget was both inspiring and maddening.
A broad coalition of consumer, environmental, low-income, and faith-based advocates spoke against proposed water rate spikes that will hurt working families the most and discourage conservation with increased fixed fees. They also delivered a coalition letter HERE urging that rate increases be shifted to those who use (or waste) the most amount of water.
The Water Utility’s current wrongheaded proposal would have those using the least amount of water pay 66% more while those using the most water would pay only 6.5% more. Many citizens spoke eloquently in favor of prioritizing conservation and fixing old pipes and ditching the expensive, environmentally damaging Water Treatment Plant #4.
Most importantly, the public hearing will continue next Thursday, Sept. 1, at 4:00 p.m. at City Hall. PLEASE plan to attend and speak, as a citizen, for restoring sanity and fairness to Austin’s water future.
Yesterday Mayor Leffingwell again insisted that Austin “does not have a water supply problem.” Apparently he hasn’t seen Lake Travis lately. And missed the headlines that Austin will enter Stage II, one-day per week, watering restrictions on Sept. 6 because our water supply lakes are 56% empty after only one year of drought.
Or perhaps he hadn’t heard that our Hill Country rivers are drying up at rates much faster than the record drought of the 50s. Or that experts predict that in the years ahead our region’s dependable water supplies will be a fraction of what they have been the last few decades.
With our climate today – and the climate we will likely live in tomorrow – the only sane course of action is to invest right now in building the most water efficient economy possible. Thankfully, we can become much more water efficient with modest investments in water conservation.
WTP4 Smells Funny: Over a year ago the Water Utility convinced our City Council to hire the multi-national engineering giant, MWH, to serve as the private manager of the water plant construction. Staff never mentioned a word about MWH’s questionable track record in other communities. Most disturbing, MWH’s troubled water utility construction management project in Cape Coral, Florida was led by the same man who is managing the WTP4 project, Larry Laws. Read THIS summary of some of MWH’s problems from the citizen online news site SLO Coast Journal in San Luis Obispo, CA.
Now the City is stonewalling requests for WTP4 contract documents, in violation of the Texas Public Information Act. What do they have to hide? And what are they hiding right now, when the City Council is evaluating options for mothballing the project?
Stay tuned and stay active! And plan to be at City Hall next Thursday.