CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Water lines across Corpus Christi are recently seeing improvements.
On Aug. 22, Corpus Christi City Council approved a construction contract for part of a citywide water line repair and replace project.
The entire citywide water project is worth about $20 million. It is split into four parts -- two small diameter and two large diameter — each worth $5 million.
Wesley Nebgen, Corpus Christi Water Director of Water Systems Infrastructure, spoke with 3NEWS and explained how this program helps them hone in on the individual water lines most in need of repair or replacement around the city.
"Allows us to target those lines that are the most susceptible to line breaks, our oldest infrastructure and our most vulnerable infrastructure," Nebgen said.
Nebgen said they track the amount of failures on pipes across the city.
"We know which ones we need to be targeting with these contracts and it also gives us an idea of the dollar value of the contracts we need to go after," Nebgen explained.
The small-diameter pipe improvements are what CCW calls Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity, or IDIQ, project. Nebgen said these projects primarily target cast-iron pipes.
Since those are the oldest in the CCW system — they were installed before 1956 — he said Part B of the small-diameter IDIQ project will focus on the area north of SPID and east of the Crosstown Expressway.
"Those are the lines that we see in a lot of back easements," he said. "In some of the older neighborhoods in the city, and that's what this contract will specifically target is a replacement of those types of lines."
He said Corpus Christi Water also looks at where higher concentrations of pipe breaks happen, usually during the summer heat.
"You might have more breaks in an area because the soil moves more," he said. "So, those might be higher on the target list."
All four projects would replace a total of about 100,000 linear feet of pipe.
Nebgen said all contracts are now approved and the entire project should be done in the next fiscal year.
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