City of Round Rock asks west side residents to conserve water during water main repair

ROUND ROCK, Texas - The City of Round Rock is asking residents west of I-35 to conserve water through Tuesday, July 18, while crews repair a major water main break. More than 11,000 homes are in the affected area. 

The break is in a 36-inch water main located on the south side of RM 1431, about half a mile west of I-35. 

"The line is a pretty old line, but also we're in dry conditions, so when you're in dry conditions the soil shrinks a lot, so you can get some soil movement, which affects the pipe. The pipe is about 36 years old as well," Michael Thane, Director of Utilities with the City of Round Rock said.

Water service to the area will temporarily be switched to a water source limited to 12 million gallons per day. Customers in this area are currently using an average of 10 to 11 million gallons per day. Over half of this usage is estimated to be from outdoor watering. 

Thane says on Friday, crews worked to seal off the line, and the water should stop gushing out on Saturday. Then, more prep work will be done before the main part of the repair on Monday.

Thane says the leak started out small a couple of weeks ago, but it was in a spot they weren't able to fix.

"With these dry conditions we don't want any water waste, but it was such a small amount versus the risk, we had to weigh that, so we need to make sure we can provide the water to the city in the hot summer months, versus the small amount that was leaking. We made the decision, let's see if we can push it off a couple of months," Thane said. "Unfortunately, the pipe wanted to break more, and now it's a significant amount of water leaking from the pipe, which we definitely need to get in there as soon as possible."

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Due to the size of the break, specialized third party contractors have to come in to fix it.

The city is encouraging people to temporarily stop watering or to hand water their lawns.

"We don't want our storage tank levels to drop, because then worse things can happen. We can end up in boil water notices, or whatever, but we're being precautionary, and we feel confident about our plan, and we'll get this done as soon as we can," Thane said.

"I'm not running my sprinkler system as often as I usually do," resident Ed Brooks said. "My lawn looks pretty good here, as long as it's looking good, that's all I'm concerned about."

Irrigation systems at parks on the west side won't run over the next few days either. Everything is expected to be back to normal Tuesday.

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