Kempner Water Supply Corp. will begin construction soon on the Cliff and Eldine Poe Water Treatment Plant at Stillhouse Hollow Lake.

A groundbreaking ceremony is planned for Wednesday. Town hall meetings -- which will explain construction progress, the timeline for completion and the overall costs associated with the project -- will be held Dec. 9, Dec. 16 and Jan. 6 at 6 p.m. at the Kempner Volunteer Fire Department training facility.

The plant, tentatively scheduled for completion early in 2010, initially will treat 7.5 million gallons of surface water per day and can be expanded to a treatment capacity of 23 million gallons per day, KWSC General Manager David Sneed said.

"We have enough raw water to treat 20 million gallons per day just for Kempner," Sneed said.

The corporation also has a contract with the city of Salado to treat as much as 2.5 million gallons a day for the Bell County municipality.

The facility will ensure KWSC complies with Texas Commission on Environmental Quality Chapter 290 rules governing production capacity. Once the plant begins operation, KWSC also will receive treated water at a lower cost than the corporation currently pays, Sneed said.

"Treated water costs will be lower than with our current supplier, Central Texas Water Supply Corp., but that does not necessarily equate to a lower base rate," Sneed said.

Construction costs, which total about $26.5 million for the treatment plant and a pipeline from the structure to a pump station at Chaparral Road and Texas Highway 195, factor in to the base rates the corporation charges its customers, Sneed said.

"Those things obviously have cost money, and they have driven up our base cost considerably," the general manager said.

Patrons will benefit over time, however, Sneed said, from treatment costs lower than what CTWSC charges KWSC.

Once the need for additional treatment capacity became apparent, the two corporations negotiated "for many months," Sneed said, without reaching an agreement. Because other Cental Texas Water Supply customers said they did not need additional capacity, KWSC would have had to pay the entire cost of building extra treatment capacity if the corporation bought from CTWSC the additional water it needs, Sneed said.

The KWSC general manager said Lampasas will benefit from Kempner Water Supply's new treatment plant.

"There is definitely not anything in the plans to stop serving water to Lampasas," Sneed said. "This actually affords Lampasas some additional options beyond a sole source of Central Texas Water Supply Corp. Lampasas will always have the option of getting water through Kempner."

The additional Kempner Water Supply treatment capacity will provide the city of Lampasas with an emergency source of water in cases of conservation or water facility repairs, Sneed added.

"It gives them some flexibility that they didn't have before," he said.

A report by the Brazos River Authority and the Clay Roming engineering firm indicates Stillhouse Hollow can support three water intake structures, Sneed said. Cliff and Eldine Poe Water Treatment Plant will become the third such facility to open at the lake, joining a CTWSC structure and another operated by the Brazos River Authority.

The Cliff and Eldine Poe plant will be located on land KWSC owns. Some of the pipeline, which travels about 16 miles in all, sits on Army Corps of Engineers land, but most is on state property along Farm-to-Market Road 2484 and Texas 195.

Total construction time for the pipeline -- tentatively scheduled to begin operation by late 2009 -- will be about one year, Sneed said. The treatment plant will take about 18 months to complete.

Another pipeline, from Stillhouse Hollow to a tank on private property about five or six miles due west of Texas 195, may be built in four or five years, Sneed said.

Matous Construction of Belton submitted the winning bid for KWSC's treatment plant, raw water line and intake structure. McLean Construction of Killeen won the pipeline bid.

The treatment facility's name honors Mrs. Poe, a former member of the KWSC board of directors and steering committee, and her late husband, elected to the board of directors after Mrs. Poe resigned.

"They were very important to Kempner Water Supply Corp., along with several other people," Sneed said. "There was no one more deserving of the plant being named after them."