Senate Bill 3 requires public water systems to have plans for maintaining service during extended outages. Cedar Park did not have a power failure at its water treatment plant on Lime Creek Road during the winter storm and has redundancy in its power supply, said Eric Rauschuber, the public works and utility director, during the Jan. 27 City Council meeting. But the city is required to “enact plans for extended water outages when the power is off for more than [24] hours during an emergency,” according to city documents.
The city will use $1.2 million from its American Rescue Plan Act funds to purchase two two-megawatt generators for emergency power generation at the city-owned water treatment plant. Cedar Park City Council unanimously approved a purchase and delivery agreement Jan. 27 for the generators.
The project will provide greater resiliency and protection and is part of the city’s $6.1 million water system resiliency project paid through federal funds. The remaining $4.8 million for the project will be used on construction and engineering contracts, which are to be approved at a later date.
Rauschuber said because of a long wait time for the arrival of the generators, the city will pre-purchase the generator to meet SB 3 timing requirements. The wait time is about 25 weeks.
The city’s energy provider is Pedernales Electric Cooperative. Rauschuber said the city’s strong relationship with PEC helped prevent water outages in Cedar Park.
“I strongly believe that the reason we didn’t lose power at the water treatment plant was because of that relationship," Rauschuber said. "We were in a position to not be switched off."
