The San Patricio Municipal Water District will advertise this month for construction bids on the first leg of a new 16-mile water transmission pipeline.  This line will parallel an existing line providing drinking water to Taft, Odem, Rincon Water Supply Corp. and Seaboard Water Supply Corp.

The first 3.5-mile section will stretch from the new West Portland ground storage tank and pump station to FM 893 where it will connect with lines serving the City of Taft and Rincon WSC.  Bids will be requested on multiple pipe sizes and a contract is expected to be awarded in September.

The transmission pipeline is one of a series of Water District projects in an $18 million expansion program designed to increase capacity, enhance reliability and maintain water quality.

Work began in July on the new West Portland Pump Station that will feed the new transmission line.  A new 2 million gallon water storage tank has been completed at the site.  Pump station fencing is complete and site preparation is underway.

Engineer James Schwarz told the Water District Board of Directors that he anticipates the pump station being in service by the end of the year.  This will allow sections of the new transmission line to be tested and put in service as they are completed.

Section 2 of the pipeline project will extend it an additional 10.5 miles to connect to the Odem area delivery system.  Section 3 will extend two miles westward to connect to the Seaboard system which serves a rural area. 

Customers in Odem, Taft, Portland, Gregory and rural areas currently receive drinking water treated at Corpus Christi’s O.N. Stevens Filtration Plant at Calallen via a line built in 1952.  As new treatment and pumping capacity comes on line and new pipelines are completed these customers will begin receiving water from the District’s two potable water treatment plants located between Ingleside and Gregory.

District General Manager Jim Naismith reported that work on $7 million in improvements at the district’s treatment plants is proceeding well after being slowed by heavy rains earlier in the summer. 

A building that will house a new set of high service pumps is nearing completion.  In the next step pumps, motors, control equipment and direct-drive backup diesel power systems will be installed inside the building.

The new pump station will take on the job of providing drinking water to all district customers.  The high-efficiency pumps will be delivering substantially more water volume than the existing system and are expected to do it at about the same electric energy demand as the old pumps – some of which have been in service since the 1960s.  Naismith said plans call for some of the existing pumps to remain in place as backups to enhance system redundancy and reliability.