Customer Profile: City of Temple
Founded in 1881 as an important stop on the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railroad, the City of Temple has grown from a small community centered in the Blackland Prairie region to a thriving municipality of more than 75,000 in the busy and growing Interstate-35 corridor.
Temple was founded as a railroad community and still has a strong railroad presence today. The BNSF Railway (Burlington Northern and Santa Fe), one of America’s largest freight railroad companies, has a major rail yard in the city. Amtrak offers passenger train service from Temple to locations throughout the U.S. daily. Temple’s Railroad and Heritage Museum, in the downtown Santa Fe Depot, has several historic exhibits, including an authentic 1921 steam locomotive onsite, as well as sleeper cars, a boxcar and cabooses.
Today, Temple is well known as a medical hub thanks to the Baylor Scott and White Medical Center, McLane’s Children’s Hospital, and the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine. It is also home to Wilsonart International, which produces quartz, laminate and solid surface countertops and metal art, and the McLane Group, a wholesale supply chain that employs more than 20,000 people.
The Brazos River Authority has a strong partnership with the City of Temple. In its early days during the 1930s, when the BRA was known as the Brazos River Conservation and Reclamation District, the organization was headquartered at Temple’s Kyle Hotel.
A water agreement between the BRA and the City of Temple was finalized in November 1961, boosting the city’s existing right granted in 1916 to draw from the Leon River. The BRA currently contracts to provide up to 30,453 acre-feet of water per year from the Leon River and Lake Belton to the City of Temple. The City also has a water right of its own from the Leon River that provides an additional 12,500 acre-feet per year. The City processes the water at its water treatment plant for use as drinking water for residents of Temple and neighboring communities.
Since the 1970s, the BRA has also partnered with both the City of Temple and its neighbor, the City of Belton, to operate the Temple-Belton Wastewater Treatment Plant, which treats wastewater generated by the cities.
The BRA also operates a second wastewater treatment facility for the City of Temple, which is known as the Doshier Farm Wastewater Treatment Plant.
For the past 15 years, Temple has been making substantial improvements to its utility infrastructure and plans to continue to make investments to enhance infrastructure into the forseeable future.
The Temple-Belton plant can treat up to 10 million gallons of wastewater per day, about 70 percent of Temple’s wastewater, while Doshier Farm treats about 30 percent.
The Temple-Belton wastewater plant received the Ronald B. Sieger Biosolids Management Award from the Water Environment Association of Texas earlier this year for the production of Tri-Gro, a mulch and compost product that recycles brush, limbs and trees – keeping them out of area landfills – as well as wastewater biosolids. The award is given for “significant accomplishments in the field of biosolids technology and management practices within the boundaries of the State of Texas.”
Tri-Gro compost and mulch products are an environmentally-friendly way to improve both lawns and gardens while reducing pollution in our streams and waterways. This inexpensive product made of native woods decomposes slowly, maintaining its natural color longer while still providing organic material to the soil over a long period of time. A plentiful choice of products is available at the Temple/Belton Facility at 2405 East 6th Street, off Interstate-35. More information on Tri-Gro can be found here.
More about the City of Temple’s Utility Services can be found here.