Water Forward plan to go to Council this fall

After over three years of meetings, the Austin Integrated Water Resource Planning Community Task Force is finally ready to bring its Water Forward plan to Council this fall. Although there is not yet a set date to appear in Council chambers, Teresa Lutes of Austin Water told the members of the Water and Wastewater Commission at their Sept. 12 meeting that they would be seeing the fifth and final version of the plan at their Oct. 10 meeting. “That will be the meeting where we plan to bring forward our final recommendation (to the commission),” she said. Right now, the task force has completed version four of the plan and will host a public open house on Sept. 18 to hear comments from the citizenry. (Another was held on Sept. 13.) “If there is any glowing red light from the public that (says), ‘Hey, we need to look at something,’ then we don’t put that off,” noted Commissioner Nhat Ho. Lutes assured him that public comments would be considered and appropriately executed on a rolling basis – the city expects to update the Water Forward plan every five years. However, as the first iteration prepares for implementation, Lutes said that the draft that goes before Council will include a recommendation that the task force continue through implementation. “We do think there is a lot of value with continuing to work with the task force,” she said.