Council Agrees to Extra WTP 4 Payment
The City Council agreed to pay another $15.5 million to finish Water Treatment Plant 4. Photo by Jessie Wang, KUT News.Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Austin City Council begrudgingly parted with $15.5 million today to help complete construction of a water treatment plant in northwest Austin. The facility is also often referred to as WTP 4.
The difficulty is that the city has already paid $359 million for the project. That was the original cost the city approved for construction of WTP4. Council members said they thought the $359 million figure was set in stone, but obviously it wasn’t. Sheryl Cole, the city’s mayor pro-tem, looked for ways to come up with the money.
“We received a memo and there was some thoughts at some point about selling property to deal with cost overruns associated with Water Treatment Plant 4,” Cole said. “Can I get any information about that?”
Water authorities said yes, there is a property that will be sold. And, there are some savings associated with the project since the bond interest is lower than originally expected. That’s when the council decided to sign the check.
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