Austin's $508-million Water Treatment Plant No. 4 required engineers and contractors to creatively address a host of environmental concerns to ensure that the city could provide enough water for its growing population through the century.
“It's a backbone project for us, not just in terms of the next few years but for decades to come,” says Greg Meszaros, director of the Austin Water Utility. Participants not only have to build the plant on a hilltop, but also construct new tunnels burrowing under a nature preserve and intakes siphoning water from the bottom of a recreational lake ringed by pricey homes.