Sunnyvale water master plan outlines about $140 million in phased projects to meet growth

Corey Wilkinson of consulting firm Garver presented the townWilkinson said the plan is a 20‑year roadmap rather than an authorization to spend and emphasized that the towncurrently meets state pressure and storage rules but will need to add capacity and resiliency to keep pace with anticipated population growth.

Wilkinson said Sunnyvaleis expected to grow from roughly 9,100 residents to about 14,300 by build‑out (around 2045). The planidentifies three primary gaps — ground storage, pumping capacity and redundancy — and calls for a phased capital improvement plan (CIP) totaling about $140,000,000 over the build‑out horizon. "Sunnyvale's water master plan, or water system, works well today, but the growth that you're having is gonna require major investment to keep pace with that," Wilkinson told the council.

The CIP breaks the total roughly into $93,000,000 of facilities costs (pumping and storage) and about $47,300,000 for transmission and distribution improvements, including trunk‑line upsizing and looping to eliminate dead ends and improve fire flow. Wilkinson flagged a shortfall of roughly 3,100,000 gallons of ground storage to meet an 8‑hour resiliency recommendation and said peak‑day demand could grow from about 6.7 million gallons per day to roughly 10.8 million gpd if an assumed 1,000,000 gpd industrial user comes online.

Council members asked whether some projects were already budgeted; staff said the town placed $6.5 million of bond proceeds toward the Riverstone ground storage tank in 2025 and that additional debt issuances and grant opportunities (including a Texas Water Board WSIG application) would be used to fund the program. Wilkinson and staff emphasized the plan is intended to guide decisions and that individual projects would return for separate approvals, design and bids.