Aledo, Texas, a booming suburb west of Fort Worth, is getting an $808,000 federal grant to expand its overtaxed wastewater treatment plant as the city's population races toward 20,000 residents.

The small city has grown nearly 300% since 2000, from fewer than 3,000 people to more than 10,000 today, driven by families fleeing to new subdivisions in the Dallas-Fort Worth sprawl. But infrastructure built for a rural town hasn't kept pace. The wastewater plant expansion is meant to improve treatment efficiency and capacity before the system fails to handle the load.

The funding came through a congressionally directed earmark in the 2024 federal spending bill, inserted by Rep. Kay Granger, a senior Republican appropriator who announced her retirement this year. Earmarks allow individual members of Congress to steer federal dollars to specific hometown projects without competitive review, a practice Congress revived in 2021 after a decade-long ban.

Aledo is one of hundreds of fast-growing Texas towns caught between explosive development and modest city budgets. With annual operating funds around $20 million, the city couldn't easily finance major wastewater upgrades on its own. The EPA estimates a $271 billion national funding gap for wastewater infrastructure over the next 20 years, and Texas faces additional pressure from state environmental regulators cracking down on undersized systems.

The grant will fund construction to expand the treatment plant's capacity and improve the quality of treated water released back into the environment. Project work is expected to continue through at least mid-2026, according to federal records. The city will manage the project directly without subcontracting to other agencies.