Homestead Meadows North is finally getting a fix for its notoriously leaky water system, with the Texas Water Development Board on Thursday signing off on a $5 million award to the Haciendas Del Norte Water Improvement District. The sparsely populated corner of far East El Paso has been limping along with a decades-old 12-inch raw water line that officials say is behind chronic breaks and heavy water loss. The new money will cover replacement pipe, modern meters, isolation valves, and fire hydrants meant to cut those leaks and speed up repairs for the roughly 1,155 residents who rely on the system.
What the TWDB approved
According to the Texas Water Development Board, the project will swap out 6,550 feet of 12-inch raw water line and 2,420 feet of 6- to 12-inch distribution mains. The plan also calls for 200 ultrasonic water meters, 40 isolation valves, and eight fire hydrants and reducers. Board documents note the district serves about 1,155 residents on roughly 358 connections and that its 12-inch raw water line, at about 40 years old, is prone to failure.
The same packet puts a number on the problem: the system is losing roughly 18 million gallons of water per year, or about 27 percent of treated water. Service meters are still checked by hand because the district lacks a SCADA computer system, which slows leak detection and response. In other words, it is an old-school setup facing modern problems, and the state is now footing the bill for a targeted upgrade.
Local context: recent breaks pushed urgency
Concerns about aging infrastructure have been running higher than usual after a major January pipe failure left thousands of Northeast El Paso residents without water. That incident added political and public pressure to move faster on replacement work. KFOX14/CBS4 reported that the city utility has been reviewing metallurgical findings from that break and shifting toward non-corrosive materials for future pipe replacements.
Where the funding comes from
This $5 million award is part of a broader push at the Texas Water Development Board to deploy voter-approved Texas Water Fund dollars in small, high-need systems, including water-loss mitigation grants run through the Rural Water Assistance Fund, Texas Water Newsroom reports. Proposition 6, which voters passed in November 2023, created a pool of money that the board is now steering toward projects that trim water losses and bolster resiliency in rural and disadvantaged systems.
Costs and schedule
The TWDB packet lays out a long runway to construction. It lists an Aug. 14 financing closing date and a design and construction schedule that would kick off work in mid-2027 and wrap it up by October 2027. The same documents caution that the district may need to raise its interest-and-sinking tax rate by about $0.0969 in 2027 and another $0.1619 in 2028 to cover debt service tied to the bonds, according to TWDB.
Staff notes that the project will touch roughly 4.5 percent of the district's system, a surgical intervention aimed at the worst trouble spots rather than a full system overhaul.
What residents can expect
If the district closes on financing and moves into design, residents in Homestead Meadows North should start seeing more planning activity and community outreach over the next year while engineers map out the replacement work. Construction is slated to follow in 2027, with crews focusing on the segments identified in the state paperwork.
Local reporters say they have asked El Paso Water for more details on how this effort will sync up with the larger utility's repair plans, but for now, the TWDB packet remains the main public window into how the $5 million will be spent and when residents might finally see fewer breaks and less water literally flowing into the dirt.
