Austin Water Construction Standards are available to ensure the City of Austin’s assets are of the highest quality. We offer resources to help engineers and contractors design and build water, reclaimed water and wastewater infrastructure projects in the City of Austin.
Austin Water Construction Standards
- Utilities Criteria Manual - The Utilities Criteria Manual provides guidelines and criteria for design, construction and coordination of water and wastewater facilities within the City of Austin and outside the city to the boundaries of the utility service areas. Information obtained from this manual is intended to provide orderly methods for obtaining utility services.
- Current Standard Specifications - Our Current Standard Specifications outline the procedures for constructing water and wastewater facilities for contractors.
- Current Standard Details - Our Current Standard Details provides engineers the details for their construction plans.
- Standard Products Lists - Austin Water (AW) Standard Products Lists (SPLs) specify acceptable manufacturer products for use in the construction of water, reclaimed water and wastewater infrastructure. These products have undergone stringent testing to ensure the safety, reliability and consistency within the AW system.
- Pipeline Engineering | AustinTexas.gov – Austin Water Pipeline Engineering website provides resources for compliant design of public water, wastewater, and reclaimed water infrastructure. The site includes Pipeline Engineering’s scope of responsibility; local and state development requirements; various checklists and forms; information on Capital Improvement and General Permit Projects; and links to the technical manuals required for compliant public water/wastewater design.
Plan for Disinfecting Potable Water Mains
This section describes methods of disinfecting newly constructed potable water mains; mains that have been removed from service for planned repairs or for maintenance that exposes them to contamination; mains that have undergone emergency repairs because of physical failure; and mains that, under normal operation, continue to show the presence of coliform organisms.
The plan shall comply with AWWA C651 (Disinfecting Water Mains) and AWWA C655 (Field Dechlorination), latest editions, and shall be developed using one of the following templates, unless otherwise approved by the Design Engineer and/or Austin water:
The Slug Method and Spray Method (per AWWA C651) are also acceptable if better suited for disinfection. The contractor shall decide which disinfection method to use for a given project. The HDPE Municipal Advisory Board (MAB-03 2019) recommends that new HDPE water mains should be disinfected in accordance with the procedures outlined in AWWA C651 (Disinfecting Water Mains), using only solutions of liquid disinfectants and not powders or tablets.