With the ceremonial turning of a valve, Arlington and Dalworthington Gardens city leaders on Friday celebrated the connection of a new drinking water service line between the two cities.
Through an agreement reached last year, Dalworthington Gardens is the first municipality to begin buying drinking water from the City of Arlington. Dalworthington Gardens can purchase up to a million gallons per day from Arlington, which is a secondary water supply source for the smaller city.
"This gives us the ability to have multiple sources coming into our city,"Dalworthington Gardens Mayor Michael Tedder said. "It's a tremendous day for us. We're very proud of this."
Dalworthington Gardens will pay Arlington $2.09 per 1,000 gallons, with annual rate adjustments to ensure Arlington Water Utilities is recovering all direct costs associated with providing the service, Arlington Water Utilities Director Buzz Pishkur said.
Arlington can currently treat 172.5 million gallons of water a day. Average daily demand from Arlington customers is only about 53 million gallons a day while peak demand last summer during the height of dry season was 115 million gallons a day, Pishkur said.
"We have more than enough capacity to serve Dalworthington Gardens today as a supplemental source of supply or to provide all of the daily and annual water demands for the entire city system,"Pishkur said.
Dalworthington Gardens won't be Arlington's only customer for long.
Last year, Arlington also signed an agreement to sell up to 5 million gallons of drinking water per day to the Bethesda Water Supply Corporation in Burleson. That connection is expected to be in place next year, Pishkur said.
Arlington is also working toward sell drinking water to the City of Kennedale and the City of Cleburne, Pishkur said.
"We have a great reputation for our quality of water. We have capacity available that our residents have funded. Now we're finding a way to sell some of that capacity to our surrounding communities at a very competitive price,"Pishkur said.
Friday's valve-turning ceremony culminates nearly two years of planning and cooperation between the two cities, Pishkur said. But partnering with Dalworthington Gardens on city services isn't new. The two cities already collaborate on wastewater collection and police mutual aid.
As part of its commitment to providing customers with high-quality, great-tasting water, the City of Arlington is in the midst of a $15 million, multi-phase upgrade of its two water treatment plants. "We've got some really good water and we have a lot of it and it tastes great too,"Arlington Mayor Jeff Williams said.
In 2012 and 2015, Arlington's water was recognized in the "best tasting surface water in Texas"category at the Texas Water Utilities Association's Annual School Best Tasting Water Contest. This was following the city's 2014 recognized by the North Center Texas Regional Best Tasting Water Contest.
The City of Dalworthington Gardens paid for infrastructure costs associated with the connection. The City of Arlington was able to save Dalworthington Gardens more than $500,000 by building the connection with city staff instead of contracting the project out, Pishkur said.
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