Hutto has water surplus, wants buyers

There was a time when Hutto was on track to become the next boom town of Central Texas. And with new people moving in, it would mean vastly increased water needs.

But that expected growth never materialized.

"We are set to (use) just over 2 million gallons of water per day," Micah Grau, Hutto assistant city manager said. "But we're actually using about 1.4 million gallons."

That, said Grau, is because Hutto has seen a huge drop in monthly building permit applications.

"It really peaked in 2006 when we issued over 700 new residential permits," he said.

"Then the bad economy kind of affected the rest of the nation and Central Texas as well, so that our growth started slowing in 2008.

The building permit application plummeted to about 180 a month, he said.

Now the city is looking for a faster-growing city or an industrial user to buy the water it no longer needs