Tyler looks ahead with 20-year comprehensive plan, Lake Tyler Master Plan; approves $4.2 million for emergency water plant repairs

Published 5:45 am Thursday, February 26, 2026

The Tyler City Council on Wednesday received a presentation over the final draft of the Tyler Tomorrow Comprehensive Plan, approved a new Lake Tyler Master Plan, and approved increasing funding for emergency repairs at the Lake Palestine Water Treatment Plant.

Tyler Tomorrow Comprehensive Plan 

Kyle Kingma, director of planning and floodplain administration for the city, presented the final draft of the Tyler Tomorrow Comprehensive Plan, which included the Future Land Use Map (FLUM) and draft of Midtown, The University of Texas at Tyler and north end revitalization area development plans.

“The Tyler Tomorrow Comprehensive Plan is a 20-year guide for how the city plans for the future, so looking at as we grow as a community how we are going to maintain our sense of community and how we plan for traffic, housing and a variety of issues,” Kingma said. “It’s really about making sure that over the next 20 years that we still maintain what’s great about Tyler and go to the next step.”

Kingma said the plan establishes long-range land use policy and updates the FLUM, which the city utilizes as a guiding tool for zoning decisions, capital improvement planning and development code updates.

“Throughout this process, we have engaged through various means for public engagements to try to understand and learn from the public what they like about Tyler and what they think might need to improve about Tyler and where there are things to tweak or not mess with at all,” Kingma said. “We heard a lot of feedback about improving traffic congestion or making that easier for commuters and making sure we have a community that preserves its open spaces such as having walkable trails.”

Kingma said the city gained feedback through community meetings, surveys, open houses and draft plan reviews then added the feedback into the plan. Other public priorities that were added based on the feedback include protection of water quality, maintaining a family atmosphere, supporting local businesses and strengthening the local economy.

The core vision of the plan is to also strengthen Tyler’s regional role in higher education, healthcare and economic development in a more streamlined plan, versus the previous 569-page plan from 2007.

“The vision includes the new statement that was developed through our community engagements that over the next 20 years we want to recognize that Tyler is the heartbeat of East Texas and has many opportunities for a lot of things,” Kingma said. “The plan is shaped around that vision and the strategies, recommendations and policies are all tied back to that vision statement.”

Kingma said the plan is a “living document,” meaning there is flexibility to account for growth and change that focuses on actionable strategies.

The next steps include a presentation to the Planning and Zoning Commission and future city council consideration for adoption. After adoption, Kingma said there will be potential updates to the development codes, conduction of annual progress reviews and a major review around the 10-year mark to ensure goals remain on track.

Emergency repair funding increase 

The council approved two requests from Gracon Construction Inc. to increase the contract amounts for emergency filter repairs at the Lake Palestine Water Treatment Plant.

The first contact will be to replace filters two and five and eight air scour valves for an increase of $1,066,538.80 and the second contract will help rehabilitate remaining filters for the Southside Wastewater Treatment Plant at the Lake Palestine Water Treatment Plant, which will cost $3,194,800, totaling to $4.2 million for both projects.

City utilities director Kate Dietz said the initial estimate for Contract 1 was approximately $1.5 to $3 million, but after receiving a manufacturer report, concerns arose that failures could continue in other filters and to avoid future risk, additional filter components were added to the repair scope.

“Unfortunately, repairs such as this take much longer than a typical value replacement or something like that,” Dietz said. “So we knew it was going to be at least six months out when we could actually make the repair and make each filter whole again.”

Dietz said in early July 2025 operators detected water in the air scour line, in August filter No. 5 experienced underdrain failure, then in September a second underdrain failure occurred and in October a pipe gallery flooding occurred as a result, meaning the system that purifies Tyler’s water was failing. After a temporary emergency shut down to protect critical equipment and water restrictions the plant was reinstated at 8 million gallons per day (MGD), which is below the normal operation level.

Dietz said the filters had exceeded its 20-year expected service life and due to modern advancements to plastic material instead of hard clay to make sure the water flows down through sand media, moves through the underdrain system and clean water exits to the distribution system the filters do not last as long as they used to in the past.

“We will have two crews working simultaneously to have filters two and five complete hopefully by the end of March or early April,” Dietz said. “So we will be in a good state, ready for the higher demand season that hits us around April and of course that’s dependent on weather.”

Dietz said all filters are expected to be complete by October 2026 and once filters two and vie are restored capacity is expected to increase to around 16 MGD and each additional filter restored will add around 2 MGD.

City approves Lake Tyler Master Plan

Other items   

The council also unanimously approved the following items and routine proceedings and previously discussed items during the meeting:

• The adoption of an ordinance amending Tyler City Code Chapter 6 to make certain amendments to the 2023 Edition of the National Electrical Code regarding provisions related to ground-fault circuit-interrupter protection for personnel and certain specific appliances.
• The acceptance of the Revenue and Expenditure Report for the period ending Dec. 31, 2025.
• A request that the City Council consider making appointments to the Historical Preservation Board.

To watch any of the city council meetings, visit the city’s website at cityoftyler.org, YouTube or Facebook page. The Tyler City Council meetings are held at 9 a.m. on the second and fourth Wednesday monthly on the second floor of City Hall, located at 212 N. Bonner Ave. in downtown Tyler.