Mayor discusses wastewater plans at Chamber luncheon

Dripping Springs Mayor Bill Foulds Jr. briefly discussed the city’s wastewater treatment plans at the Chamber of Commerce monthly luncheon on April 23.

Last month, the Texas Supreme Court ruled in the city’s favor in a dispute over a wastewater permit. The ruling ended a 12year battle and paved the way for the city to move forward.

“We’re excited,” Foulds told the crowd. “I never thought I’d get choked up over wastewater.”

Foulds said the biggest obstacle now is that the city needs to go back to the Texas Water Development Board to request an additional $51 million in funding. They may also need to apply for a new permit to give the city added capacity.

“That’s what twelve years does to us,” Foulds said. “You can’t have two permits pending at the same time. We would have had to have withdrawn what we submitted… and just gone for 1.5 [million gallons] and restarted the whole process.”

Foulds said design work is nearly complete for the current project, and bid packets should go out by mid-summer. The west side of town will probably be the first to see improvements.

“I really hope the downtown area is the one that benefits first,” Foulds said. “That is more on the west side, so that should be a great thing.”

The mayor said the city teams will be meeting soon to discuss next steps.

“We’re going to work on it as fast as we can to get things moving,” Foulds said.

He said the city has a webpage about the project that will be updated as more information becomes available.

“This is really great news for the whole community,” Foulds said. “I hope it helps the businesses. And we’re going to get new neighbors. There’s no stopping this growth, y’all know that. It would be a shame to not share it with other people - we just have to do it in a responsible manner.”