Water treatment in Lago Vista, TX works best when it is matched to the one public water system that serves the whole city. Absolute Water Solutions tests at your tap and sizes carbon, softening, sediment and UV stages to what it finds. Public water system TX2270092 also keeps a public file, and reading it is part of how we plan a system.
- Water quality. A coliform violation logged by the state in 2015; a 2016 trihalomethane running average of 85 parts per billion against a federal limit of 80, a health-based MCL violation; and two health-based surface-water treatment-technique violations under the turbidity rule in July and August 2025. At home, these point to carbon for disinfection byproducts and a sediment prefilter.
- Service. Stage 5 restrictions declared on October 24, 2019, after a transmission main failed; Water Treatment Plant #3 out of service November 28 to December 2, 2025, with a boil-water notice south of Dawn Drive; a boil-water notice for Lower Tessera on August 5 and 6, 2026; and a September 11, 2026 low-water-pressure advisory attributing complaints to "location, elevation, system demand, or a home's private plumbing." At home, these point to a pressure check before any install and an optional UV stage.
- Records. An October 17, 2024 treatment-technique and reporting violation on the lead service line inventory. At home, this points to a look at older plumbing and reverse osmosis at the kitchen tap.
That record applies to every tap inside the city limits, because the city's service certificate covers the whole city and there is no second source: no wells, no interconnect, no purchased water. Two Lake Travis plants, 144 miles of main, eight pressure planes and 5,633 connections as of 2024. Absolute Water Solutions has been treating Hill Country water from the other side of that lake since 2003, and this page covers what each part of that record means at home and what we install for it.
Two plants, one of them forty years old
Water Treatment Plant #1 on Seminole Drive was built in 1985: a 2.0 million-gallon-a-day conventional up-flow plant with two clarifiers and gravity filters, sharing a four-acre site with the city's only wastewater plant. Plant #3 at Marshalls Point Cove adds another 2.0 MGD and feeds the Lohman Ford and Tessera side. The city's 2025 Water Master Plan is candid about the arithmetic. The 2023 maximum day hit 2.71 MGD against 4.0 MGD of total treatment, connections have grown 6.7 percent a year since 2015, and 6,455 new connections are already entitled at Tessera, Winn Ranch, Shoreline Ranch, The Hollows and the rest, with only 677 built. Every expansion goes to Plant #3, because the Plant #1 site is full.
None of that is a criticism of the people running it. It helps explain the 2025 turbidity violations and the late-2025 plant outage, and it is why we treat a sediment stage ahead of a softener or a carbon tank as standard here. When a plant upset or a main repair stirs the system, the prefilter takes the grit so the resin and the membrane do not. Households that want a disinfection backstop of their own during a notice add a UV stage; we install Viqua UV systems.
Trihalomethanes, and the carbon that handles them
The 2016 violation was trihalomethanes, the byproducts formed when a chlorine-based disinfectant meets the organic carbon in lake water, and the number is lower today. The 2024 report puts the TTHM average at 59 ppb, with single samples from 49.5 to 67.1, and haloacetic acids at 22. That is under the limit, and carbon at the point of entry widens the margin at your own taps. The disinfectant residual itself averaged 2.2 ppm in 2024 but ranged from 0.4 to 3.9, because 144 miles of main spread over eight pressure planes means a home at the far end of a plane can see low-residual water one week and a fresh 3.9 ppm dose the next.
Both problems answer to carbon at the point of entry, sized for the 3.9 ppm peak rather than the 2.2 average. The city's recent reports have labeled the residual both ways, chlorine one year and chloramines another, and the two forms call for different media, so we test for the form at your tap and specify catalytic carbon when the result calls for it. That is the water filtration conversation in Lago Vista. The kitchen-tap half of it is reverse osmosis, which also covers the trace PFBA and lithium the 2024 unregulated-contaminant sampling picked up, both well below any limit.
Hardness: the number the city does not publish
Neither the 2022 nor the 2024 Consumer Confidence Report lists hardness, calcium, TDS or pH. The lake does. Lakeway MUD, drawing the same Lake Travis water on the south shore, reports 184 mg/L, about 10.7 grains per gallon, and Austin Water's lime-softened supply averages 93. Treat Lago Vista water as moderately hard to hard, roughly 5 to 11 grains, and treat that as a range rather than a reading. We confirm the number at your faucet before a water softener is sized.
Where the softener goes depends on the decade. In Tessera, The Hollows and the newer infill around Marshalls Point and Bowden Point, the builder left a loop in the garage and, often, an undersized unit on it; a tankless heater downstream on ten-grain water gains the most from a correctly sized softener. In Bar-K Ranch, the original 1960s-70s resort plat, the first-generation softener is usually due for replacement, and the copper behind it is older still. Two local rules apply to both. Any home still on a septic system, and the roughly 180-connection gap between the city's water and sewer accounts suggests a few remain, must use a demand-initiated regeneration softener under Texas law. And every install gets a pressure check first: the master plan models many low-lying areas above 80 psi behind PRVs while the hilltops near 1,220 feet run low, and a softener valve has to live with either.
Lead in the old plats
The 2022 lead-and-copper round put the 90th-percentile lead result at zero and found one site over the 15 ppb action level, and the city drew a lead-service-line inventory violation in October 2024. Twenty-six percent of Lago Vista homes predate 1990, and the weekend cabins along Bar K Ranch Road converted to full-time houses carry the galvanized and copper runs that make that one site plausible. For those homes we look at the service line and the interior plumbing before anything else, and an under-sink reverse osmosis unit rated for lead reduction is usually the first recommendation.
The pump on the dock
Lakefront owners along the city's shoreline pump raw lake water for irrigation under LCRA domestic-use contracts: up to 10 acre-feet a year at $165 an acre-foot, twice-weekly watering on the same odd-even schedule as the city, nothing from November through February. Lake Travis is on the state's fully infested list for zebra mussels, so the screen and the pump volute foul, and the water arrives with post-rain turbidity and algae. Screened intakes, sediment prefilters and a proper winter shutdown are the surface-water treatment work we do here. It is irrigation water; the house still drinks from the city.
Across the lake, around the dam
Our base in Spicewood is about seven and a half miles from Lago Vista in a straight line and about 40 road miles, roughly 70 minutes, by way of TX-71, RM 620 over Mansfield Dam and RM 1431, because no bridge crosses Lake Travis between the dam and Marble Falls. Tessera and the Lohman Ford end of town are a few minutes closer than the golf-course peninsula. Visits are scheduled Monday through Friday, 8am to 5pm. Absolute Water Solutions is TCEQ-licensed (WT001370) and insured, every job since 2003 has been done by our own crews, and the record at the top of this page is why we test first: the report tells you what left the plant, and the tap tells you what arrived. Call (512) 587-8188 or request a free estimate.