Last Wednesday, the WTCMUD1 Board finalized $5.81M in new bonds. Following this, the District posted a FAQ statement on the website addressing the bond projects. While I already considered Chris Rocco’s “Generational Equity” comment, the District's statement contains an important disclosure:
[T]he district’s water accountability rate is currently under 90%, which indicates leaks in the water line system. This needed repair is expected to be very costly, according to engineering estimates.
Water accountability is the ratio of water billed to water purchased. It is the pulse of any water distribution system. In the budget released at the August 26, 2026, Board meeting, the District expects to lose money on water sales for fiscal year 2026; it will spend more buying water from Cedar Park than it recoups selling it to residents at a 20% premium.
The District's stated "under 90%" figure actually understates the severity of the trend. Over the past year, accountability has routinely hovered in the high 70s and low 80s. At the time the bond projects were being planned, there was likely a hope that the highly favorable numbers seen in August and October of 2025 would re-emerge as the norm. But the trend has settled, and it is clear the problem is structural.
My standing objection to the recent bond is that some of the planned projects cannot show a positive return on investment and that, in any case, the district has adequate revenue and reserves to pay cash. By contrast, capital spent for water accountability might actually yield a positive ROI, satisfying the criterion for acceptable public debt I laid out. To the extent that the planned projects are necessary and urgent to increase water accountability and can't be funded from savings without dipping into emergency reserves, it would move the needle.
The pressing question is how the District should adjust its current project plans in light of the accountability problem. Water supply life extension makes up 62% of the bond projects by value, and life extension and water accountability are entirely intertwined. It is like asking a mechanic to make a list of repairs needed for your car's longevity when its fuel economy has inexplicably dropped by 10 MPG. A good mechanic would tell you to diagnose and fix the MPG problem first: it is a threat in both the short and long term.
Let's consider the three possible causes for our missing water. For each of these, we will look at whether the current bond projects could address it and whether there are alternatives.
1. Customer Meters Are Under-Registering
Mechanical meters tend to under-read as they age, especially at low flow. The bond plan includes a $1M project to replace them with new ultrasonic models that maintain accuracy. How much of the accountability gap might this fix? Nobody is saying. But let's suppose this $1M meter project would close the accountability gap: Take a victory lap! It's election season! Instead, the statement warns that still more spending will be required.
A cheaper, data-driven solution would be to pull a random sample of meters and test the old ones. My back-of-the-envelope statistical analysis shows that we could achieve an actionable study with a sample as small as 60 meters, which is chump change compared to $1M.
2. Water Mains are Leaking
Unlike residential plumbing, water supply systems are looped to provide redundancy, making leaks harder to pinpoint. The bond plan earmarks $2M to replace water mains. The engineer told me he planned to use leak analysis to identify segments to replace. Bad data equals bad results. Without knowing where the leaks are, there is a risk of prematurely replacing serviceable mains while neglecting high-risk segments. If the planned main replacements were a slam dunk to improve accountability, I would have expected another victory lap.
There is an old-school technique to find leaky segments: engineers plan where to add main meters and isolation valves. Once the system can be isolated into zones, crews test each zone by shutting off all the service connections (usually in the dead of night) and checking whether flow through the main meters actually stops. If the necessary meters and isolation valves can't be funded from savings while maintaining adequate reserves, then the Board should consider requesting permission from the TCEQ to shift some of the bond money to this.
3. Supply Meters are Over-Registering
The meters that read the District's total usage are owned by the City of Cedar Park. Currently, the District doesn't have a second opinion. This might be as simple as getting Cedar Park to agree to rotate and test the meters. Worst case, it would be possible to add secondary meters that the District controls to audit the incoming supply. If the District fully converts to ultrasonic meters, it would be a waste not to get matching 4-hour readings from the supply meters.
Fixing the Process
We won't fix water accountability with a single project; we have to systematically isolate the problem until crews can dig with confidence. The Vote 3 platform offers a structural upgrade to this process. In addition to expanded citizen input, we will require full lifecycle infrastructure planning and establish a strict firewall between infrastructure planning and project execution. When the experts guiding our district’s infrastructure planning have no expectation of financial gain from the resulting construction contracts, they can provide the Board with the independent, tough, data-driven reality checks we need.