Loomis Austin News Archives

August 2004

Kennedy Ridge STEP Project nominated for Environmental Excellence Award

A Loomis Austin-managed self-help program  that enabled a low-income neighborhood outside of Austin to connect to a wastewater collection system has been nominated for a Texas Environmental Excellence Award by the Office of Rural Community Affairs (ORCA).

Presented every spring, the awards honor the state's most outstanding waste reduction and pollution prevention projects.

Kennedy Ridge is an unincorporated low-income community in Eastern Travis County. While a part
of the community was served by water and sewer service, many other residences were without these services. The common use of cesspools in the neighborhood to dispose of sanitary waste posed a health risk to residents.

In the summer of 2000, Travis County received a $350,000 Community Development Block Grant through the Texas Department of Housing & Community Affairs' Small Towns Environment Program (STEP). Grant Development Services Inc. was awarded the grant administration contract and
Loomis Austin Inc. was selected for engineering design.

Over 10 consecutive weekends, volunteer work crews comprised of Kennedy Ridge residents (typically about 25 volunteers) installed more than a mile of pressure sewer piping, completing the extension of sewer service to the portions of the community previously without service. In addition, a bypass sewer main was constructed for future buildout.

Volunteer labor and an innovative engineering design allowed the improvements to be built at a fraction of the normal cost and enabled 72 new connections to the system. (Click on photo for LAI project description)