Title
Approving an interlocal agreement with Lower Colorado River Authority for a trunked radio system for the City's Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition system, and authorizing the City Manager to execute the same.
Summary
As part of the FY2026 budget, the City's Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) staff formulated action plans to migrate the City's SCADA network away from the City's Enterprise IT network. This migration allows for greater security for the water and wastewater systems to take them "off-network" and not have them co-mingled with anything that is connected to the internet. With this migration, staff reviewed different options to migrate our remote facilities (pump stations, elevated tanks, lift stations) to a private, licensed radio network that is standalone and not connected to the internet at all, but can connect back to our major treatment facilities. City staff also evaluated the option of keeping the remote sites on a private Verizon network; however, this option would still require some connection to the internet which poses security vulnerabilities for critical infrastructure. Finally, staff have been working with the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) on evaluating the option to utilize their private LTE network that is only utilized for critical infrastructure and LCRA owns the entire LTE band they are operating within.
After evaluating these options, City staff determined that working with LCRA on utilizing this network was both the most cost effective solution and the most secure option to meet the City's SCADA network needs. It allows for a fully private network that isn't connected to the internet while also minimizing the City's need to construct additional infrastructure to obtain an FCC license to run a separate network. As LCRA's mission and infrastructure aligns with the City's in regards to the criticality of the operations, their network needs to keep this network running and operational would meet the City's goals to ensure constant and consistent network traffic to keep our systems functioning. City staff have met with the LCRA Network Team on numerous occasions, evaluating both their responsiveness should their be an outage and their equipment that is already positioned within the Pflugerville area. City staff have also tested out our equipment in a mock dry-run to ensure that network connectivity is consistent for our remote sites and have found that the data throughput is similar or better than the private Verizon network that the City's remote sites are currently utilizing.
As the LCRA network is already licensed through the FCC and they already have infrastructure in place to cover the Pflugerville area, this Interlocal Agreement (ILA) would allow the City to join that network and pay a similar monthly cost as what we are currently paying Verizon, but with a more secure network that is intended to serve critical infrastructure. This ILA will also allow for the migration of the City's water and wastewater systems to move to a private network that is not connected to the internet and move to a network that is not intertwined with the City's Enterprise network.
Prior City Council Action
NA
Deadline for City Council Action
Action is requested on November 12, 2025
Funding Expected: Revenue __ Expenditure __ N/A _X_
Budgeted Item: Yes __ No __ N/A _X_
Budget Source: _N/A___________
Amount: __NA______
1295 Form Required? Yes __ No _X_
Legal Review Required: N/A __ Required _X_ Date Completed: ___9/3/25________
Supporting documents attached:
City of Pflugerville - Interlocal Agreement - Radio Services and Equipment
Recommended Action
Approve an interlocal agreement with the Lower Colorado River Authority for a trunked radio system, and authorize the City Manager to execute the same.