We have been working with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and our engineering firm Jacob Martin to bring our water system into compliance with current regulations. In addition we are exploring how to bring online another water source to reduce the demand on our one potable well, the Smith Well.
Jacob Martin will deliver the design for our water treatment plant at the Smith Well in the next week or so. TCEQ has given us instructions on a fix to our water delivery lines that they believe will help maintain the water pressure to their required standard.
We will need to, by March 15th, connect the water line that runs to all the cabins with the water line at the upper RV sites. We have estimated a cost of $15,000 to do the work.
Our reliance on the Smith Well as our only source of potable water and the gallons per minute it can produce puts us at great risk and it does not meet the standards required by TCEQ.
We have 64 connections in our system and by rule we should only have 25. We are currently working under an exception to that rule. We need another well that can deliver an adequate amount of water to bring us up to standard.
Options we have before us is to reduce our connections, drill a new well ,in hopes that we get a good one, that delivers the appropriate gpm., or bring on line an existing well and get it certified by TCEQ for potable use.
Our most approriate existing well is the Cabin Well. It is situated on the hill above the cabins and upper RV sites and would require the least amount of pipe to tie into the water system.
The concern is if we do the testing and engineering and it is not approved for potable use are we just wasting money?
TCEQ allows the use of non potable water for toilet flushing, laundry, and landscaping. Parallel and separate lines that deliver the non potable water would reduce the demand on the Smith Well by, we think, by about 30%. That would be a huge benefit for our system but I could find nothing in TCEQ regulations that would give us credit towards our connection issue.
I reached out to them and asked the question. Is there a way for us to get credit towards our connection deficit by using non potable water to flush our toilets and do our laundry? I received a call from one of their engineers and ulltimately the answer was yes. We would have to install the non potable lines, put them in use, and monitor the usage over a period of time to determine the actual savings.
We have estimated a cost of $15,000 to install a pump and pipe, pump the well fror three days to determine the flow rate, and send water samples for analysis to determine its chemical make up. We will be asking the board, today for approval to proceed.