Corpus Christi Water begins $20 million line repair project

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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 target individual water lines 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 an Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity, or IDIQ, project. Nebgen said these projects primarily target cast iron pipes.

Since those are the oldest in the system—installed before 1956—he said Part B of the small diameter IDIQ project will focus on the area north of SPID and east of Crosstown Expressway.

"Those are the lines that we see in a lot of back easements 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," said Nebgen.

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. So, those might be higher on the target list," Nebgen said.

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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