Plano City Council approved three resolutions to allow for existing city parkland to be granted as both temporary and permanent easements—the right to enter or use property without owning it—during its April 8 meeting. Work on all three projects is expected to begin in 2024 following negotiations on compensation to the city, said Mark Simon, the assistant deputy of engineering at the North Texas Municipal Water District.
The overview
The three projects within Plano are located within two parks: Los Rios Park and Legacy Trail, according to city documents. A second phase of the water district’s peak flow management improvement project at the Rowlett Creek regional wastewater treatment plant is expected to increase the plant’s processing capacity to 97 million gallons per day, Simon said.
A temporary easement of nearly 0.7 acres within Los Rios Park would be effective for four years, Director of Parks and Recreation Ron Smith said. According to city documents, the easement would be used for construction only.
For projects involving compensation for permanent easements, funds will be deposited into the city’s Parks Improvements Community Improvement Program, which will be used to pay for acquiring future park space and planting new trees, per city documents.
Digging deeper
The second and third projects involve work within the park area of Legacy Trail, Smith said. The two projects involve improvements to the Preston Road lift station and installing a new sewer force main—a pipe that conveys pressurized wastewater—that runs parallel to Rasor Boulevard, Simon said.
He added that improvements to the lift station include replacing older equipment in the station and increasing the pumping capacity as the demand for sewer services increases, in addition to a permanent easement that would allow for access of the sewer force main. The final project involves replacements of the force main and requires a 0.4-acre temporary easement for construction, per city documents.
“The 121 force main needs to be replaced to maintain reliable wastewater service for Frisco and Plano,” Simon said.
The force main replacement project involves installing about 8,000 linear feet of new sewer lines, which requires a new permanent easement of almost 7 acres within Legacy Trail and a temporary construction easement of more than 7 acres, Simon said.
What’s next?
The project within Los Rios Park is expected to be finished by 2029, Simon said.
Improvements to the Preston Road lift station could take up to three years, he added, while the new force main project is expected to last 1 1/2 years.
Because of some of the financials involved in the negotiation of the easements, council is expected to consider approval of the easements at a future meeting ahead of the planned start of construction later this year.
