Back in the fall of 2021, Presidio County embarked on a journey to identify the many water and wastewater needs of communities throughout the county in order to then seek the necessary funding from the Texas Water Development Board to address them. The TWDB has a variety of different programs that provide infrastructure funding, such as the State Water Implementation Fund for Texas (SWIFT), the State Revolving Funds, and the Economically Distressed Areas Program (EDAP), among others.
In early 2022, Presidio County was preselected to apply for EDAP funding for eligible projects. EDAP provides funding for first-time water and wastewater service and to address longstanding environmental violations related to existing infrastructure. The county ultimately received about $3.3 million in grant funding and $1.3 million in the form of a loan to design new water systems for the colonias of Las Pampas and Shafter. The EDAP package also included funding to design and build a new sewer system for the Fort D.A. Russell area of Marfa and to design and build a new water and wastewater system for the East Heights neighborhood of Marfa located between highway 90 and the railroad tracks just east of Alamito Creek.
One would intuitively assume—based on how economies work—that funding for economically distressed areas is intended to address the needs of an entire economically distressed area. But, in fact, EDAP funds can only be used to provide service to existing, inhabited residences within such an area. Any commercial, public, or other nonresidential structure is ineligible for service with EDAP funding. If you haven’t built a structure on your property because you haven’t had access to water, your property is ineligible. If no one lives in your structure because it has no water, your structure is ineligible. This requirement was particularly exasperating when applied to the East Heights and Las Pampas projects where owners have established very few residences due to the lack of water. The engineers and I, however, were able to identify enough residences in each area to maintain the eligibility of the projects.
The EDAP process for the design of water and wastewater systems involves four phases: Category A, which is an eligibility assessment to determine economic and residency eligibility; Category B, which assesses existing facilities and documents any problems; Category C, which identifies, develops, and analyzes alternatives in order to ultimately develop a preferred solution; and Category D, in which the project’s implementation plan is finalized. In addition to the criteria that a design must meet to complete these categories, each one of these projects involves unique challenges.
The Fort D.A. Russell project, for example, will provide a new sewer line to the houses on Officers Row as well as the buildings inside and adjacent to the old fort. Because the foundation itself sits at the lowest elevation within the project area, a lift station will be necessary to collect and convey the waste from this portion of the system to an existing manhole on Madrid Street. Another potential complication involves the location of the lift station itself just south of the historic Artillery Sheds that house Donald Judd’s 100 untitled works in mill aluminum. But thanks to smooth collaboration between the county and the Chinati Foundation, a site was able to be selected that will not interfere with existing structures or detract from the landscape.
The design for Las Pampas encompasses a water line that will run along the east side of Highway 90 from the Junta de los Rios standpipe to a water storage tank to be constructed about 6 miles to the north. The line will also include two pump stations to push the water uphill to the storage tank that will then supply the surrounding residences by gravity. While the line itself will be located in the highway right-of-way, the pump stations and storage tank will require acquisition of private land along the route. Approaching those landowners has been agonizingly slow because of the difficulty in definitively determining who owns the land. Fortunately, my own detective work enabled me to identify the owner of the storage tank site, and Presidio-based surveyor John Kennedy has been working to locate the owners of the two pump station sites.
The most complicated of the EDAP projects has been the design of a new water system for Shafter. The town’s hydrogeology is notoriously complex, and the topography of the area poses huge challenges to the workability of a gravity-fed system. After many false starts, a suitable parcel with a willing owner was finally identified. The current design envisions a production well to be drilled to a depth of at least 1,000 feet into the Mina Grande Aquifer, an unclassified freshwater aquifer beneath the town. A water tower will be constructed nearby on the same parcel which the owner has agreed to donate.
At this point, all projects, except for Shafter, have completed Category C and are nearing completion of their environmental assessments. The Shafter project has completed Category B, and its environmental assessment is in the early stages. Once the Las Pampas and Shafter designs have completed Category D, the county can pursue construction funding. The Marfa projects will proceed to bidding and construction after they complete Category D, possibly as early as next summer.