Although the utility district encompassing proposed development Provence, in the 16000 block of Hamilton Pool Road, Austin, was denied a request for water and wastewater service March 16 to complete the project’s anticipated phases 2-5, the residential community is moving forward with the first phase of 678 homes and a possible Lake Travis ISD elementary school site, project developer Jim Meredith said.
development plan
The 2013 master development plan for Provence, formerly named Masonwood, includes 1,600 residential lots and 200 commercial lots on about a 900-acre parcel owned by John Hatchett. Phase 1, Section 1 features 150 homes, and the first phase incorporates 678 homes overall on 460 acres, including a potential school site, Meredith said.
adding water service
Municipal Utility District 22—responsible for Provence’s infrastructure—was denied water service March 16 by the West Travis County Public Utility Agency for the project’s remaining four phases of 1,137 living unit equivalents, or LUEs, a term used to quantify water use.
If Provence’s request for 1,137 LUEs had been granted, the density of the project’s remaining 440-acre parcel, representing phases 2-5, would be about 60 percent denser than the Phase 1 tract, WTCPUA Commissioner Bill Goodwin said.
The WTCPUA agreed in 2015 with Masonwood LLP to grant the development 700 LUEs for its first phase, a decrease from the project’s original 1,837 LUEs requested to serve its entire development.
“Phase 1 can be completely developed—all 678 lots,” project engineer Daniel Ryan said. “We have sufficient water, sufficient wastewater; all the approvals are secured for the preliminary plan portion of it. What happens on the back really is a function of what [Meredith] decides once he is underway with Phase 1.”
Meredith and WTCPUA General Manager Robert Pugh said Provence was told the agency had the capacity and engineering ability to serve the remainder of the Provence development just prior to the March 16 meeting when such service was denied. However, nearly $8 million of facility improvements would be needed to accommodate the additional 1,137 LUEs of service, and the timeline to construct these improvements was uncertain, Pugh said.
WTCPUA District Engineer Curtis Wilson said the agency limited its water supply at 32.5 million gallons daily, and the Provence project would surpass this limit, he said.
Developer Masonwood is adding a 400,000-gallon elevated water storage tank and already upgraded the agency's pump stations, Ryan said.
“The reason for the elevated storage tank is driven by two things,” he said. “One, the existing WTCPUA system has been prone to failure. They’ve had issues with maintaining pressure out in that area. Right now, they’ve got a system that is susceptible to failure if they’ve got a power outage or a mechanical failure. If you have an elevated storage system, those things will all go away.”
He said the elevated storage tank will also increase the supply of fireflow available to the remainder of the site.
“We are building everything internal to our system as though it needs to serve the full development,” Ryan said. “Anything less than that wouldn’t be prudent because then you have to go back and retrofit it later.”
Additionally, but not preferably, the developer can seek groundwater sources from the aquifer that lies below the property, he said.
“The whole project is in the [WTCPUA] service area,” Meredith said. “If they don’t serve us, who does? I’m in their retail area. [My system] is engineered.”
