City Council unanimously approved the budget amendment April 21. According to city documents, the new funding will support 16 full-time positions at Austin Water, including 12 supervisors and technicians, and four support staff members at a cost of $400,000.
"The additional staffing approved by council today will improve Austin Water’s operational resiliency at our water treatment plants by allowing overlapping supervision between day and night shifts, as well as additional on-site engineering and training staff," said Rick Coronado, the utility's assistant director of operations, in an April 21 statement. "These positions are expected to post in the upcoming months and will be filled as soon as possible with qualified individuals who meet Austin Water’s licensing requirements."
Additionally, $1 million will be spent on a range of technology updates to modernize software at water treatment plants.
"Enhanced software will provide additional procedural auditing, work tasks tracking and knowledge management, which will help in identifying training needs or improvements in our standard operating procedures," Coronado said.
In response to the February boil-water notice, council opted to send more funding to the water utility instead of providing customers with a goodwill billing credit. Staff said the credit would have cost $3.9 million and provided around $10 of relief for residential customers. While Austin Water has placed blame for the February incident on three employees at the Ullrich Water Treatment Plant, city and utility officials say the agency is also contending with growing staffing and modernization concerns, which the funding will help address.
The budget action comes weeks after Austin Water came under new leadership, following the resignation of longtime Director Greg Meszaros. The utility is also facing an external audit of all levels of its operations. Officials called for that review in response to the multiple citywide boil notices Austin has experienced in recent years.
