The Kingsland Water Supply Corporation (KWSC) Board of Directors took a step back Aug. 12 from a grant that has been pursued for more than two years and voted to re-think ways to deliver water to the far eastern Indian Trail area.

When plans were begun in 2006, the project was estimated at $337,000 with a hefty KWSC match of $137,000. It would have served 26 low-income families, revised to 19 families, without cap or connection fees. The board approved a resolution to notify the county that KWSC would not pursue its original plan.

“The new estimate is $513,000,” reported J. Preston Mason, the KWSC secretary/treasurer who serves on the infrastructure committee and had received revised figures from Steve Kallmann of S.D. Kallmann, LLP, the KWSC engineering firm. “Our cost would be close to $250,000... and the grant would not be funded until 2010.”

Mason presented two possible alternatives to deliver water to Indian Trail -- one involving Slab Road (RR 3404) and Sorrel Street, with preliminary estimates of $13,000, and another of about $50,000 involving a line to serve Indian Trail and Carlton Trail via River Oaks Drive and Dove.

None of a number of various possibilities considered by the committee had been estimated to total more than $88,000 or to involve a completion date later than 2011.

Mason said that General Manager Earl Foster proposed saving cost by using staff resources instead of contracting the project and allowing for the same two or three years that would be required for grant approval, bidding and construction.

About 16 of the original 19 homes identified could be served through the alternate plans, but those new customers will have to pay fees that would have been waived as a provision of the ORCA grant. Even with six-year financing, that could amount to $40 per month on top of each month's water bill.

Last September, the board increased the cost new customers pay for connection to water lines from $3 a foot to $8 a foot and added the cost of the materials. That brought to the meeting prospective members who had anticipated the possibility of bearing the cost of running a line and paid in advance for connection to their houses.

“We made a contract,” said one.

Foster had begun to review those contracts Monday, but supported the in-house approach, saying, “We think we can do it (Indian Village service) cheaper and faster without all the bureaucracy.”

When the first application for a Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) through Office of Rural Community Affairs (ORCA) Small Towns Environmental Program (STEP), was denied, J. Gandolf Burrus of Grant Development Services (GDS) of Austin, began the application process again. In March, the Llano County Commissioners Court agreed to submit it for the 2009/2010 grant cycle.

About 15 people attended the Aug. 12 board meeting and a number had come to hear the review of board policy on relocating meters or transferring membership and cap fees with a meter.