Zavalla is getting a new water system, and the city won’t owe a dime for it.
The Texas Water Development Board approved $5,392,157 for the City of Zavalla at its meeting in Austin on Thursday, Oct. 1. The money comes through the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund as principal forgiveness, which means the city doesn’t repay it and doesn’t put up a local match. Angelina County Judge Keith Wright announced the news Thursday night at the Lufkin/Angelina County Chamber of Commerce’s Elected Officials Reception at Crown Colony.
What the money buys
The money covers planning, design and construction, and most of the work is underground. According to the board, the city will replace about 31,000 feet of water distribution line — roughly 30% of the system, much of it asbestos cement pipe. The project also includes:
- Four 300-gallon-per-minute service pumps and twenty 10-gallon-per-minute submersible pumps
- Three test holes, followed by a new well rated at 86,000 gallons a day
- A 100,000-gallon elevated storage tank and two 30,000-gallon ground storage tanks
- Demolition of the city’s existing elevated and ground storage tanks
- New water meters
Design work is expected to wrap up in 2027. Construction is scheduled to start in September 2027 and finish by June 2029. The project qualified in part as a green project because crews will use trenchless methods to replace pipe, which means less digging up of streets and yards.
Why Zavalla needed it
The city’s distribution system is more than 60 years old. It averages about 48 line breaks a year and loses around 10.3 million gallons of treated water annually — close to 30% of everything the plant produces. The old tanks, wells and service pumps didn’t meet state minimums, and the city has faced enforcement from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
Residents have lived with the results. This July, leaks and electrical trouble at the pump house left the town without reliable water for nearly a week. Angelina County Emergency Management, the Texas Division of Emergency Management, and the cities of Lufkin and Diboll stepped in, and bottled water was handed out while the system was patched. County emergency management coordinator Ricky Conner said at the time that the problem had been building for a few years.
Zavalla has fewer than 1,000 residents, which made it eligible for the board’s help as a disadvantaged, small and very small rural system.
Mayor Pam Hooks, who has asked residents for patience through the outages, had a short message for them this week: “Hang in there, it’s coming soon,” she told the Lufkin Daily News.
