The central Texas city of New Braunfels is one of America’s fastest growing cities and needs more water to keep up with growth.  But with limited sources to tap into and more prevalent drought, the city’s water services provider, New Braunfels Utilities (NBU), sought to boost its water storage capacity to stretch supplies and keep water flowing to customers. The utility opted to pilot a new aquifer storage and recovery, ASR, facility, and needed help proofing its designs and concept.

The idea of storing water in the ground to use when springs and rivers are low is simple enough.  But making it happen — designing a system of wells that could store a six-month supply of fresh drinking water in an uncharted salty aquifer — is complex and technical.  That’s why NBU came to us to determine if the project is viable to go ahead.

Our ASR team performed the following engineering and design services: review of ASR system designs, aquifer characterization, development of an ASR simulator, and feasibility study. We confirmed that the new ASR system should be able to provide a contingency supply of 1,800 million gallons — equivalent to about 28% of NBU’s total supply — to help keep water service reliable during peak demand periods.  As the new ASR system becomes operational, NBU will be able to use our simulator to plan injection and recovery operations and carry out groundwater monitoring.