The Kingsland Municipal Utility District Board of Directors rolled up sleeves Monday to review long-range needs and to begin the work of holding the line on budget increases to a minimum to be ready to meet them.

The proposed operating budget on the table for the coming year totaled $1,835,341, two percent below the current 2007-2008 figure approved last year. It was capital expenditures to which they turned their carving knives. General Manager Jeff Koska had included a list of major upcoming expenses which will have to be prioritized and the goal will be bringing $380,000 worth of projects within a four percent increase of the $240,395 budgeted in 2007-2008.

Working on an estimate that the district is within five years of the state mandate for initiating plans for replacement of a plant at 75 percent capacity, the district this year purchased land and made the first of three $575,000 payments on the proposed site. Grants have become scarce in recent years and a new plant requires voter approval if a bond issue is to pay for it, but there is no getting around a state requirement for one.

With investment interest becoming a nationwide handicap, KMUD will have to meet the land payments and build as much reserve cash as possible for the impending construction, all the while maintaining an aging system out of estimated revenue of $2,714,475.

With figures in hand for an additional budget review July 29, the board also had the preliminary results of a new long-range plan for the district.

Koska explained that the Texas Commission for Environmental Quality had offered to include the KMUD in a small group of sewage treat plants in its Sanitary Sewer Overflow (SSO) Outreach Initiative Plan program. Just two of 30 or 40 to be developed around the state have been filed, but the KMUD plan is due on June 25.

“When we had the floods last year the TCEQ were just beginning the infancy of the program,” said Koska. “When they investigated our overflows, the TCEQ asked if we wanted to participate with a 10-year plan to mitigate issues that can cause overflow.

Last year was a natural disaster and lines would in any case have been washed out, but the regulatory agency saw that identifying potential trouble spots could improve the system. By filing the SSO plan and sticking to it, KMUD receives assurance that TCEQ fines will be avoided if some overflow occurs.

The maintenance of the system’s 24 lift stations, pumps, lines and alarm systems will be more items to spread over the budgets of the next decade.

The current number of connections to the KMUD system, covering about 4,080 acres, includes approximately 2,032 accounts in Llano County and 498 accounts in Burnet County. The population served, extrapolated from the 2000 Census, is estimated at 5500 people. The average daily flow delivered by the collection system and processed at the wastewater treatment plant is approximately 400,000 gallons per day through almost 400,000 feet of piping.