Pearland City Council approved a total of $5.7 million in design contracts for work on water plants in the city at the Aug. 26 meeting. The water plants will eventually provide drinking water for Pearland citizens. The council approved a contract of nearly $1.3 million for the final design work on Phase 1 of the Surface Water Drinking Plant. Phase 1 will include the raw water intake structure, the pump station and the site detention. The council also approved a contract of $2.9 million for the final design work on Phase 3, which includes the mechanisms that will store and transmit drinking water. The final design for Phase 2 was approved in March. “With these services and these services that we are recommending on the next item, we’ll be closer to bringing the city’s largest capital improvement project of all time online during the winter of 2023,” Deputy City Manager Jon Branson said. Construction is expected to start in early 2020 and wrap up in 2023, and to cost $145 million for the entire plant, city officials said. The plant will be located west of Airline Road, near Mustang Bayou according to the city's capital improvement plan. The council had questions about the subcontractors for the projects, as there is a federal requirement that some subcontractors on a project must be under-utilized business, Council Member Derrick Reed said. The city met those requirements, Pearland Director of Engineering Robert Upton said. The third water-related contract is $1.58 million for the design work to build a concrete storage tank to replace the damaged Bailey Road ground storage tank. This project would start construction in second quarter of 2020.