Grapevine City Council signed off on a batch of water and wastewater infrastructure fixes at its Oct. 6 meeting, including a long-awaited repair to the irrigation system at Meadowmere Park's soccer complex and preliminary planning to relocate an aging raw water pump station threatened by erosion. The approvals cover an $18,425 replacement waste pump for the city's wastewater treatment plant and a $47,778 pump and lake-water intake system for the park, along with the hiring of a construction manager at risk to help plan a bigger overhaul of the city's water treatment plant infrastructure.
The council approved improvements for the city's water and wastewater treatment plants, according to Community Impact. Among the approved purchases was the $18,425 replacement waste pump for treatment Train 3 at the Wastewater Treatment Plant, a smaller piece of a much larger rehabilitation effort for the plant's treatment trains that has previously been estimated to cost around $13 million.
Soccer Fields Get Their Lake Water Back
At Meadowmere Park, the city will pay $47,778 for a new pump and lake water intake system that will let the soccer complex's fields go back to being irrigated with lake water, a practice the fields relied on before their previous system gave out. That earlier lake-draw setup, installed around 2013, broke down from age and several flood events, according to the same Community Impact report. City officials say the replacement system has an improved design and is expected to be a longer-term solution.
The city has said lake water is better for the fields and more cost-effective than using treated city water, an argument that explains why officials moved to restore the system rather than switch permanently to a city supply. No timeline for construction or installation of the new pump system was included in the approved plans.
Raw Water Pump Station Relocation Takes Shape
Beyond the park and the treatment plant, the council also approved hiring a construction manager at risk, for an estimated $25,000, to help plan the relocation and improvements of the water treatment plant's raw water pump station. That firm will assist with preconstruction scheduling, performance maximization and developing a guaranteed maximum price for the project, per the report.
The project will replace the existing raw water pump station and combine it with the golf course raw water pump station, while also adding an emergency generator and demolishing the old station. The driving factor behind the move is erosion of the bank and bedrock below the existing building, which was constructed around the 1980s, the news outlet reported.
Part of a Larger $30 Million Infrastructure Push
These latest approvals build on a bigger financial commitment the council made earlier this year. Grapevine City Council previously approved issuing up to $30 million in certificates of obligation to help fund water and wastewater treatment plant projects, with the bonds sold at a 3.9% interest rate and a 20-year maturity, according to a separate Community Impact report from earlier this year. City officials said they do not expect to raise the property tax rate to cover the debt, noting it will instead be funded through utility-rate increases for fiscal year 2025-26.
That bond package is intended to cover a wide range of projects, including maintenance and an emergency generator at the water treatment plant along with replacements for wastewater plant clarifiers, filters, blowers, air lines and electrical systems. Some of that work overlaps with ongoing treatment-train upgrades at the Peach Street Wastewater Treatment Plant, where engineering firm Provenance Engineering has been handling design and construction-phase services, according to the firm's own project records. That work, which included two new secondary clarifiers and electrical improvements to the plant's Motor Control Center, was designed to keep the plant running at 80% of treatment capacity during construction so the system could keep pace with the city's growing population.
A related emergency project addressed underperforming clarifiers that were causing bulk sludge issues at the plant's Train 2, requiring Provenance Engineering to deliver a sealed design in under three months to meet the city's urgent timeline, per the firm's project documentation. Together, the various fixes reflect a city working through a backlog of aging water infrastructure on multiple fronts at once, from neighborhood soccer fields to the treatment plants that keep the city's taps running.
