Capital Improvement Program projects make up a significant portion of the North Texas Municipal Water District’s budget. These projects are investments in the future health, safety and economic growth of our region, and they often take years to complete and can cost billions of dollars.
The CIP is finalized in June of every year after careful review by Planning, Engineering and Operations with funding sources confirmed by the Finance Department.
NTMWD’s Planning, Engineering and Operations Departments work together to ensure the right projects are underway at the right time to provide current and future members of our communities with the essential services needed.
Every NTMWD pump station, treatment plant or mile of pipeline was once a project based on growth projections. As our area continues to attract people and businesses and existing infrastructure ages, new projects are developed and added to the CIP.
Planning Program Manager Yanbo Li said the 2026 water system CIP includes more than $1.77 billion in projects. 89 percent of the projects are driven by growth, six percent for maintaining infrastructure, and regulatory requirements accounts for five percent.
Li went on to explain that projects are added to the CIP through either master plan study recommendations or an internal nomination process.
“Master plan studies are conducted every five years to update population and water demand projections and the CIP portfolio,” he said. “Meetings and discussions with the Member Cities and Customers on the growth projections are an important part of the master plan updates to ensure that we have the best available information and understanding on the growth of our region.”
Internal nominations capture projects that are identified between master plan studies.
“Internal nominations typically come from our operations teams,” said Li. “They notice an issue that was not captured in the last round of CIP updates. We meet with the engineering team and operations team and validate that it should be a capital project. If it is, we determine the schedule, estimate the cost, and add it to the CIP.”
After the project is added, NTMWD experts work together to decide the best course of action, considering growth projections, cost and other factors. While some projects are delayed or deferred based on expenses or repairs that extend the life of infrastructure, some are fast-tracked when growth exceeds previous projections.
To prevent overbuilding, most treatment facilities are built in phases. Financing all phases of a massive project would create a spike in wholesale rates, causing potential financial hardship for the people living in our service area. If population growth slowed, the projects that were built too early would sit underutilized but would still require maintenance.
“There are a lot of different options, so we do comparisons and develop the most cost-effective solution that will meet the goals,” said Li. “In addition to cost, we also consider operational flexibility, redundancy, resiliency and safety.”
The NTMWD service area encompasses more than 2,200 square miles with a population of more than 2.3 million people—which is growing every year.
“I think we're fortunate that we're in an area with high growth with good economic development,” said Li. “At the same time, it can be challenging to provide the service to meet the growth, especially when planning for our future water supplies.”