College Station City Council discusses upcoming project and water plan

COLLEGE STATION, Texas (KBTX) – The city of College Station will begin construction on Lincoln Avenue in June.

The 9.3 million dollar construction project will include removing the bike lanes and adding a shared used path, or sidewalk, on both sides of Lincoln Avenue for pedestrians and bicycles.

The city also said they will add two roundabouts at Munson and Nimitz.

The city told KBTX they purchased land at those intersections to build the roundabouts.

The project is expected to take around 15 months to complete. During that time, Lincoln Avenue will be down to one lane for traffic.

Raquel Gonzales, Project Manager for Capital Projects, sent an email to KBTX regarding the project details. You can read that email below:

“The project involves the construction of approximately 6,900 linear feet of improvements of Lincoln Avenue from Texas Avenue to University Drive. The existing asphalt road will be replaced with concrete pavement with curb and gutter with a shared-use path on both sides of Lincoln Avenue. Construction will include concrete pavement, roundabouts, drainage improvements, water/wastewater lines, and a traffic signal with a designated turn lane at University Dr.

The capital improvements department has dedicated land agents who coordinate with the project manager, engineers, surveyors, appraisers, and city attorneys to work with property owners when additional land is needed to improve existing infrastructure. Additional land was needed for the new roundabouts at Nimitz and Munson as well as a few other areas along the corridor. The city begins the process by reaching out to the property owners at the design phase to discuss the design intentions. The land acquisition process can take several months to a couple of years. The cost varies based on the size of the land being acquired and the individual negotiations between the two parties. The overall cost of land acquisition for the Lincoln Ave. rehab project was approximately $300k.”

The public is encouraged to come to a public meeting on May 7th at College Station City Hall where they will explain the project in detail and residents can ask questions.

There was also a presentation at the City Council Meeting Thursday night, on proposed updates to the city’s drought contingency and water conservation plans.

Jennifer Nations, College Station Water Resource Coordinator says with the heat of summer around the corner, College Station is making changes to how they ask residents to conserve water.

“Last night was a preview for council of what our updated drought plan and water conservation plan looked like,” Nations.

Changes include adding a third drought stage based on water demand, changing the scale they use to monitor water demand and what kind of water usage is allowed, including changes for irrigation during stage 1.

“We’re going to look at our water demand on a week-long basis and try to predict into the future. Is water demand really high? Is it going to continue being high? That will tell us ‘Okay we are going to initiate this stage.’ And if it keeps going up, then we have another stage with further limitations on water use,” said Nations.

The city of College Station says the goal of this plan is to prepare ahead of time.

“We don’t want to get into a situation where we are caught flat-footed and all of a sudden water demand is really high and people turn on their faucets and there’s no water. We want to have triggers in place so that we’re watching what’s happening with water demand, we’re communicating with residents on what they need to do, and there are also procedures in there for city operations for us to change because we also use water and we’re also big users so we have procedures in there to change our operations so that we helping reduce overall water demand,” said Nations.

The city says if people are efficient with their water use, they can avoid going into stage 1 to begin with.

“If everybody is judicious in their water use if we’re managing leaks, fixing leaks, we can stay below our stage 1 triggers,” said Nations.

Those plans could go into effect at the next city council meeting on April 25th.