Municipal Utilities

Mission

The mission of the combined utility is to provide our customers with reliable and resilient services using innovative technologies and best maintenance practices, while remaining fiscally responsible. As good stewards of our resources and environment, the goal of the utility is to provide our citizens and visitors with safe drinking water, and harmless removal of wastewater in compliance with the TCEQ and EPA.

The City of Galveston is recognized as a "Superior Water System" by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. This award recognizes overall excellence in all aspects of operating a public water system (PWS). To be recognized, a PWS must go above and beyond the minimum standards in protecting public health and ensuring reliable operation.

Ongoing Initiatives 

• Develop and execute a sanitary sewer maintenance program aimed at reducing sanitary sewer overflow and reducing inflow and infiltration and exfiltration. The program will use new technologies and reporting methods to effectively identify trouble areas and emerging issues, in a manner that will allow the CoG to plan, schedule and coordinate maintenance and CIP projects. This will be accomplished through the use technologies like:
  1. Sewer Line Rapid Assessment Tool – The technology will enable the CoG to proactively scan 100% of the sewer collection system. The data collected will determine which parts of the system will be line cleaned, televised and replaced based on actual need.  
  2. Improve televising records by incorporating NASSCO Pipe Assessment Certification Program (PACP) standards, Manhole Assessment Certification Program (MACP) standards.   The goal of PACP and MACP is to have the CoG collection system division create a comprehensive database to properly identify, plan, prioritize, manage and renovate the system based on condition evaluation.
  3. Enhance the Pretreatment program following TCEQ guidelines.
     • Maintain 100% Compliance with Grease Trap Ordinance.
     • Develop and begin a monitoring, televising and sampling program grease traps and connecting service.
     • Develop an educational outreach program the web, social media, and schools 
• Upgrade the Water/Wastewater SCADA system to the latest versions, true up the programming, renew the communication components of the system and connect the water elevated storage tanks and sewer lift stations to the SCADA system. This will increase employee efficiency by allowing staff to control and monitor sites remotely, while allowing staff to make data driven decisions and focus on system improvements.
• Enhance the CoG GIS system to improve construction efforts, reduce change orders caused by system inaccuracies, improve valve isolation times during main breaks, and allow CoG to integrate data and begin using the analytic capabilities of the GIS system. As part of this effort the City will complete the following activities:
  1. GPS 100% of sanitary sewer manholes, collect manhole attributes and import the data into GIS
  2. Correct water/wastewater pipe attributes
  3. Exercise and GPS 100% of the distribution valves, collect valve attributes and import the data into GIS 
• Develop a water maintenance program aimed at reducing water loss, improving water flow, volumes and pressure. This will be accomplished by:
  1. Incorporating a state-of-the-art AMI system, new meters that provide real-time analytics, a meter data management system, a customer facing portal and integrating these systems to each other and existing software platform. 
  2. Repair broken valves identified through the valve program.
  3. Upsizes minimum water service to 1” and above
  4. Develop district metering and right sizing of meters (nearly completed as of January 2021)
  5. Perform leak detection 100% of the distribution system using satellite technologies and in-house leak detection - As of January 2021, the City of Galveston has an in-house team that has been trained and is performing leak detection on the system.