Celina's City Council takes up three water supply items Tuesday, Oct. 13, all aimed at the same gap: the city's wholesale water subscription covers an average day but not the hottest ones.
Celina buys its water from the Upper Trinity Regional Water District, and its subscription is 11 million gallons a day. Summer demand runs above that, and the district cannot raise the city's share until its newest source, Lake Ralph Hall, is operating, Engineering Director William Janney wrote in a memo for the meeting.
That memo says the lake is tentatively scheduled to be operational in May 2027. In April 2025, the council approved designing two wells to help with peak use until then.
The southeast well
The biggest item is a $7,316,571.40 change order adding a production well to the city's Southeast Pump Station and Ground Storage Tank project, which Archer Western Construction is already building under a contract awarded in June 2025.
Staff chose to add the well to that contract rather than bid it separately. The engineer's cost estimate was $7.869 million, and Archer Western's first price was about $8.4 million before negotiations brought it down to $7.3 million, the memo says. Staff estimate the approach saves three to five months, which they say matters for having the well ready when the storage tank is commissioned.
The well would have a 900-gallon-per-minute pump. The change order gives the contractor 330 days for the well work and would raise the pump station contract to $73.4 million. Bond funds would pay for it.
A second well, at the Celina Road Pump Station, was awarded to Dake Construction in March for up to $6,584,787.