City: Austin’s water problem couldn’t occur in San Marcos

It can’t happen here.

That’s the reasurring take from San Marcos officials as Austin continues to struggle with a city-wide boil water notice issued after their intake systems were fouled by floodwater from the Highland Lakes.

Although some portions of San Marcos will continue to receive notices that they should boil water before drinking or cooking with it as they are warranted — mainly from accidental breaks in or breaches of municipal water lines — it’s more than highly unlikely anything more widespread could occur, according to Tom Taggart, the city’s executive director of Public Services.

“We have a completely redundant source of supply,” he said. Since 2000, approximately 80 percent of the city’s supply has come from Lake Dunlap, located downstream of New Braunfels on the Guadalupe River. It is piped to the municipal surface water treatment plant off Hwy. 21, then on to the thousands of residential, commercial and industrial users in San Marcos.

A fraction of the city’s supply, however, still comes from Edwards Aquifer wells (which was the city’s sole supply prior to 2000).

Taggart said that should Guadalupe River flooding increase turbidity in Lake Dunlap beyond what the city’s plant can treat, the system would simply switch over to using wells exclusively.

“We have control of all of the pump stations, all of the well pumps and intake pumps from our surface water treatment plant,” he said. “It’s just a matter of turning off the portion of the system associates with surface water.”

He added that there would not be any non potable water in the distribution system that would need to be flushed because technicians at the plant would shut it off based on what they are taking in.

On the horizon, 2023 to be exact, the city expects to also start receiving water from the Hays County Public Utility Agency (HCPUA) that will come from the Carrizo Aquifer which — like the Edwards — is largely exempt from becoming turbid.

“We’re situated very differently than Austin in terms of our supply,” he said. “The quality problems they’re having we couldn’t experience.”