Texas Border Business
By Roberto Hugo González – Texas Border Business
A major infrastructure theme in Mayor Omar Ochoa’s State of the City address on April 10, 2026, was wastewater capacity, which he described as essential to keeping up with Edinburg’s growth. Ochoa said the city is moving forward with a $33 million expansion of its current wastewater treatment plant after “more than a decade without upgrades.”
According to Ochoa, the expansion will increase capacity to 13.5 million gallons per day. He called the project “long overdue” and said it is needed to make sure city systems can keep pace with “the booming development happening across our community.” The mayor placed the project alongside other infrastructure efforts involving drainage, roads, and utilities.
Ochoa also announced that the city is looking beyond the current plant. “We’re committing to build an entirely new wastewater treatment plant in North Edinburg and to commit additional resources to its infrastructure,” he said. He presented that future plant as part of the city’s long-range development strategy for North Edinburg.
The mayor described North Edinburg as the place where the city expects future growth to concentrate. He said, “We see North Edinburg as the natural, glorious point of overflow,” and argued that the city must build the necessary utility backbone before that growth fully arrives. In his framing, wastewater infrastructure is not only a response to current demand but a way to shape where future development goes.
The speech did not include a cost estimate, design schedule, or construction timeline for the new North Edinburg plant. Still, Ochoa’s remarks made wastewater infrastructure one of the clearest pieces of the city’s expansion strategy. By pairing the current plant expansion with a second plant proposal, he argued that utility capacity will determine how far and how fast Edinburg can grow.
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