LAGO VISTA, Texas — Lago Vista’s growing population is putting a strain on the city’s water infrastructure, and city leaders are concerned about the burden on taxpayers to expand wastewater and drinking water systems.
Because of this, they went to the White House this week to ask for federal help.
In the last 10 years, the city’s population has grown from around 6,000 to around 14,000. According to projections, it could grow to 22,000 in the next 10 years, reach 51,000 by 2040 and eventually top out at around 86,000.
“That’s an immense amount of growth out here that we don’t have the infrastructure for,” Place 1 Council Member Shane Saum said.
Lago Vista is going through a lot of growing pains, and Place 5 Council Member Paul Roberts said it creates an untenable situation for growth.
“We can’t grow infinitely and continue to try to bring in funding through impact fees to fund these water and wastewater developments,” Roberts said.
So they took the fight for water from Hill Country to Washington D.C. after Saum requested a meeting with the White House. On Tuesday, Saum, Roberts and Place 2 Council Member Adam Benefield met with the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, which serves as a bridge between the federal government and elected officials in state and local government and works to address issues in communities across the country.
Saum said they discussed water supply concerns in small towns like Lago Vista and federal funding opportunities for water infrastructure projects.
“My initial message to them was not just about Lago Vista, but I was trying to convey, I think this is something cities all over Texas are dealing with,” Saum said. “If you’re located near a high growth city like Austin, their policies are leading to many people moving into your community, but you have to pay for it.”
For the city council members, walking through the gates of the White House and into the West Wing was a surreal experience.
“It was a sense of great reverence, honestly,” Roberts said. “It was amazing getting to the White House for something like this on behalf of the citizens of Lago Vista.”
The White House staff pointed them toward federal funds to apply for and connected them with staff at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture who could help with technical assistance programs or grant programs.
“An email introduction coming from the White House maybe bumps you up a bit on the list, so the next step is to have those meetings, see where they lead and maybe there’s other things we could apply for,” Saum said. “Some of these little things that technical assistant component is huge for a city like us. We don’t have a grant writer. I don’t have this entire council of people looking through all the applications and filling stuff out for us.”
Like many small towns across the state, older infrastructure is being taxed, and the rapid growth happening in the Austin area is already straining the system.
“They probably didn’t think much about this 15, 20 years ago,” Saum said. “I don’t know that many towns around here foresaw just how big Austin would become. And to ever think out here when we were less than 6,000 people that this will be somewhere people live and commute into Austin.”
The system is already at 75% capacity.
“I don’t think that you can rely on that you have that extra 25%,” Saum said. “I think there’s always this assumption that you get to 80%, and you have 20% left. You can’t necessarily rely on that because what if an entire part of your system goes down? Now you’re in trouble.”
The city is currently in the process of expanding its wastewater plant. The goal is to increase capacity from one million gallons of water daily to one and a half million daily. They also want to get to eight million gallons of drinking water daily.
As part of the projects, the city plans to shift the water treatment burden to the newer plant, and the old one will then be a redundancy.
The price tag for all of it is $86 million, which is well above the annual city budget of $30 million.
“We’re in the first stages of that now, but where that money is going to come from in the future is going to be very difficult to find,” Roberts said.
They want to avoid passing the burden onto taxpayers, so city leaders need to get creative and knock on doors to find help getting funding.
“Lago Vista is effectively a bedroom community to Austin. There’s one way in, one way out,” Roberts said. “Due to our topography, there’s not a lot of area that’s conducive to heavy commercial, big box stores, even light industrial space. It becomes too difficult to fund the construction cost of civil engineering. Much of our development is primarily housing, and our ad valorem tax revenue has to fund much of our city’s infrastructure.”
On Thursday, the Lago Vista City Council authorized the city manager to execute a contract with Garver Engineering for the Engineering Design of the Wastewater Treatment Plant upgrades. They hope to break ground with the first shovels in early 2026.
“Just the planning is millions, and it all adds up and, and you start to wonder, well, we already have bonds that are already out there that we’re going to have to pay, at what level of bond debt can we get to that isn’t going to severely impact our citizens,” Saum said. “That’s a challenge that we’re facing. It’s a challenge I know other cities are facing.”
City council members also made the trip over to Capitol Hill and stopped by the offices of both Senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, and although neither were around in their office, they were able to speak with their staff about funding for projects.
They did meet with Congressman Michael McCaul, however, and the city is requesting funding for projects through his office.
“They’ve been very helpful in giving us expectations of what to turn in and how to apply for that program, and I feel really good about our opportunity to apply,” Saum said. “I think that meeting was almost as impactful as the White House meeting because he gave me step-by-step instructions on improving my score.”
They are also applying for state funds with the Texas Water Development Board. They have done so for the last two years but have not received any money.
Saum said they also hope that state lawmakers do more in the upcoming legislative session in January to help fund new water projects and repairs for aging infrastructure.
Even though the White House staff will turn over in January and they don’t know what to expect from the incoming Trump administration, Saum said he hopes this trip to the nation’s capital will open the doors and allow Lago Vista to explore all possible avenues to get the funding it needs to build for the future.
“Even a small community of 14,000, I think this is the new way that you have to be a local elected official,” Saum said. “You have to explore all these avenues because there’s not a whole lot of certainty out there for what’s going to be available in the coming years.”
Boomtown is KVUE’s series covering the explosive growth in Central Texas. For more Boomtown stories, head to KVUE.com/Boomtown.