Built to be "the first One Water school in Texas", Wimberley Independent School District’s newest campus—Blue Hole Primary—was designed and constructed with strong support from Texas State’s Meadows Center for Water and the Environment, the Wimberley Valley Watershed Association, and a community of stakeholders, educators, architects and engineers. One Water is an intentionally integrated approach to water that promotes the management of all water—drinking water, wastewater, stormwater, greywater—as a single resource. In an area where water supplies are limited and drought-prone, Blue Hole Primary serves the growing Hill Country communities of Wimberley and Woodcreek with one of the most water efficient and cost-effective approaches ever envisioned for a school campus in Texas. This case study documents the need for innovative water solutions, bond and investment decisions, incorporated design elements, construction, and first year performance of Blue Hole Primary to serve as a reference, inspiration, and guidance for future projects.
The Phase II Improvements consisted of the construction of four (4) new buildings, renovation of seven (7) existing buildings, associated with the utilities, paving, parking and drainage improvements. Doucet upgraded the entire water and wastewater system within the approximately 80 acres campus, added new parking lots and modified existing driveways and circulation drives. The improvements included the construction of approximately 1,400 linear feet of new sidewalk to meet ADA requirements as well as adding a serpentine segmental retaining wall, a bus stop, tree planting, curb / gutter and the associated utility adjustments. Doucet developed construction plans and specification for site grading, storm sewers, sidewalks, driveways, water and wastewater improvements, retrofitted existing drainage problem areas around the campus, and performed construction phase services. Due to the old age of the campus, many underground utilities were not documented. Doucet worked closely with the contractor and school officials and resolved all the utility conflicts. Doucet also obtained approval from the City of Austin and Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation (TDLR) and prepared the Storm Water Pollution Prevention Plan (SWPPP). Special design considerations included construction in a campus setting that has tremendous amount of pedestrian traffic.
The scope of civil and site work consisted of extending a fire water supply line to feed the proposed building sprinkler system being installed with the building renovation. The fire line water source is the University's fire water distribution system, which has an existing 12-inch diameter dedicated fire line along Whitis Avenue and Inner Loop Drive, on the north side of the Peter Flawn Academic Center.
The project site was located off the southeast corner of Dean Keaton Blvd. and San Jacinto Street, behind the Simkins Dormitory. The site plan included a pump station located within a portion of the ground floor of the San Jacinto parking garage, a 105-foot diameter tank (by 70-foot high) water storage and cooling tank, and the associated parking, driveway, drainage and utility improvements. As the civil engineer of record for this project, we participated in the programming phase through final design phase and provided construction phase services. Our engineering services included assisting the prime consultant in final site plan development. Additional aspects of this project included relocating parking and driveways, protecting large heritage size live oak and elm trees, working with vehicle and pedestrian traffic during construction, adjusting existing utilities, alleviating existing drainage problems into parking garage, and presenting our project to UT staff. We developed the civil engineering design while ensuring safety for students and faculty and minimized the disruption of the day-to-day operations adjacent to the construction site.
Doucet was engineer for a 5,000 SF library at Winn Elementary and conducted site work including a detention pond, drainage, and grading. An additional sidewalk was added as well as utility service lines extended to the library.