Southlake planning commission approves water, stormwater and wastewater master-plan amendments

The City of Southlake Planning and Zoning Commission voted on March 5 to approve amendments to three infrastructure elements of the city's Comprehensive Plan'the stormwater master plan, the Southlake water plan and the wastewater master plan'and forwarded those recommendations to City Council.

Daniel Cortez, the city's director of economic development and tourism, told the commission the documents are policy frameworks intended to guide capital planning and asset-management decisions over the coming years rather than engineering fixes for individual problems. "We are talking about policy today," Cortez said, and added the plans will feed the capital improvements program that will inform FY28 projects and budget priorities.

City staff presented system inventories and risk assessments that underpin the updates. The city engineer identified the water system inventory as approximately 313 miles of potable mains, more than 3,000 fire hydrants, roughly 11,500 service accounts, seven storage tanks (four elevated, three ground) and two pump stations; Southlake purchases wholesale water from the City of Fort Worth, which sources from the Tarrant Regional Water District. On wastewater, staff reported roughly 225 miles of mains (gravity and force), 12 lift stations and about 4,170 manholes, with an average conveyance of about 2,100,000 gallons per day; wastewater treatment is provided under contract with the Trinity River Authority of Texas. The stormwater presentation noted the city manages more than 2,700 curb inlets, roughly 110 miles of stormpipe and over 13 miles of box culverts and bridges and summarized recent regional analyses (the 2016 RiskMap partnership and a 2020 2D rainfall analysis) and the 2022 stormwater master-plan phase 1 study.

Staff emphasized the plans clarify the split between public and private responsibilities, commit to an asset-management approach to prioritize maintenance and reinvestment by risk and consequence, and recommend procedural changes including a regular review cadence for stormwater fees. Cortez said the plan language is intended to make decisions "repeatable, transparent, and tied to outcomes that include reliability, public health, flood risk reduction, and stewardship of the system itself."

Commissioners who spoke praised the detail and said the updates give the city a clearer basis for prioritizing projects. With the commission's recommendation, the amendments will move to the City Council for consideration; staff said presentations and supporting studies are available online at southlakeconfplan.com.

Next steps: the commission's recommendation will be transmitted to City Council, and departments will use the policy frameworks in developing capital and operational budgets that drive project implementation in the coming fiscal year.