Welcome to the Milwood Neighborhood Association - Austin, Texas 78727

This news release just in from Austin Water Utility:

The Austin Water Utility (AWU) will begin the annual wastewater averaging cycle November 16th to arrive at the wastewater charges for customers for the 2009/2010 service year. AWU encourages customers to always conserve water but customers concerned about their wastewater costs should make special attempts to conserve water during the averaging months.

Between the start of the averaging period in November and the conclusion in March, each customer’s water use is measured for three consecutive monthly billing periods. The water usage for the two monthly billing periods with the lowest daily usage is averaged and is the basis of the wastewater average billing for the year. The month with the highest daily average water use is eliminated from the calculations. Monthly billing is based on the customer’s wastewater average or actual water use, whichever is lower. The new wastewater rate will be reflected beginning in the April 2010 statement.

AWU uses late fall and winter months to establish wastewater averages because less outdoor water is used during this time and measures more accurately indoor household water usage which is returned to the wastewater system.

Customers can go to www.cityofaustin.org/water and listed under wastewater averaging they will find the specific dates for their wastewater averaging period and for more details on wastewater averaging and reducing water and wastewater bills by conserving water.

After a very successful National Night Out here in Milwood, we have only received a few names for the Neighborhood Watch block captains. It’s important that we keep our contact lists up to date for each street throughout the year. The block captains, as point of contact for each street, can help make that happen.

The Milwood board can help disseminate important information (such as updates on the recent crime problems) if we have a list of the block captains for each street. The board will update the block captains who will in turn alert the neighbors on their street so that everyone can stay informed and have immediate updates on important situations.

Please submit the name and email address of your street block captain via our contact form. The board will, of course, keep the information private and only use it to communicate about neighborhood issues.

You may have noticed that the trains that run by Milwood have recently been extra generous in honking as they travel past our neighborhood at the Duval and Enchanted Forest crossings.  We’ve received a note from Union Pacific letting us know that contractors have been on-site the past few weeks relocating fiber-optic cable along the west side of the tracks.  Trains are blowing horns during daylight hours to warn all of the construction workers as they pass through.

For the next several months, UP will be doing this construction to lengthen the second track.  Double track will be laid back from Parmer lane to the Enchanted Forest crossing.  Many of you probably remember that this was discussed with the neighborhood during our Spring Meeting.  Once we have more details on timeline for this project and other UP-related info, we’ll be sure to pass that on to you.