WASTEWATER WOES: PART THREE
State argues it follows a ‘rigorous technical review’
Editor’s note: This is the third part in a three-part series on how local government and residents are dealing with concerns about a growing population and wastewater.
The current surge in applications to Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to build privately owned sewage treatment plants, or “package plants,” in new east WilCo subdivisions has brought to light what many say are deficiencies in the state’s approval process.
Concerns about protecting the environment, health and safety of recreational waters and the impact on neighboring properties abound in eastern Williamson County, and community members are increasingly frustrated and angry.
“In many different industries, the state requires companies to give bonds that cover the expenses needed for remediation, for missed tax payments, for all sorts of things. However, by their own definition, TCEQ is working under the pretense that the applicants will self- police and self-clean,” said business owner Luis Ayala. “They’ll only get involved if they need to, and they hope they’ll recover the expenses from the applicants. That to me is not the way an agency that is funded by taxpayers should be handling an industry with high risk.”
There are protocols, a TCEQ spokeswoman said.
“In general, responsible parties would need to conduct cleanup. In certain situations, the state may conduct cleanup operations and seek financial recovery,” TCEQ’s Victoria Cann said in an email. “(Texas Pollutant Discharge Elimination System) permit applications require the applicant to consider local environmental conditions to ensure uses (water supply, aquatic life and contact recreation) of receiving waters are protected. All permit applications undergo a rigorous technical review to ensure surface water uses are maintained.”
Ayala is in the heavily regulated industry of distilling adult beverages. A small stream that bubbles past his distillery and his home on FM 112 is being proposed as a discharge outlet for processed wastewater from a new subdivision being built by NMCV Taylor Property Investors LLC.
If approved and built, the on-site treatment plant will send household waste from over 600 residences through his property daily.
Attempts have been made to contact the developer.
Ayala surveyed his neighbors and found many of them were unaware of the pending privately owned wastewater treatment plant, or WWTP, permit and had never received any notification, even though affected parties are supposed to receive mailed notices. He said after looking at the notification list on TCEQ’s website, he and his neighbors noticed many property owners who would be affected were not on the notification list.
TCEQ provides the opportunity on its website for the public to register concerns about any WWTP application, and says comments made involving certain dates are taken into consideration for whether a public hearing is necessary before TCEQ approves the permit.
The website is designed for leaving comments, not answering questions. Sharon Wilkerson found that out when she began researching the NMCV Taylor Property Investors plant.
Wilkerson owns land that is shown on the WWTP application as having a ditch or stream running through it that is part of the route that wastewater from the proposed plant will take to get from Malish Lake to Mustang Creek.
However, Wilkerson said that stream does not exist as shown on the map.
“(Contractors for Samsung Austin Semiconductor) bulldozed over that when they buried their pipeline and leveled it out, so the flood drainage from the lake just ends there,” she said, adding that now when the lake floods its banks, it just washes into the surrounding area and is absorbed.
Wilkerson said she called TCEQ to let them know and ask questions, and was told to enter it all under the comment section for the permit application on the agency’s website.
She expressed concerns that runoff could have an impact on her hay production.
Engineers for the project state in the application they evaluated the proposed discharge stream for 600 feet, and listed livestock watering and irrigation withdrawal as the only observed uses. The engineers were not required to visually survey the entire wastewater path to ensure it would reach Brushy Creek, to see how close it came to residences, or what other conditions might exist along the waterway.
Absorption of contaminated water into the surrounding land is one of many environmental issues the Sierra Club advised TCEQ about in a letter regarding this particular permit.
Cyrus Reed, the legislative and conservation director for Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club, a national environmental protection organization, said the streams and ditches the plant is proposing for discharge are unlined, which he fears could cause health impacts in the area.
“We are concerned that the discharge parameters in the permit will fail to ensure that the receiving waters will not be harmful to people as the result of ingestion, consumption of aquatic organisms or contact with the skin by bacteria, pathogens or toxic constituents in the discharge,” Reed said. “We are also concerned that the limitations in the permit fail to ensure that the receiving waters will not be toxic to terrestrial or aquatic wildlife due to chlorine levels or other constituents in the discharge.”
The Sierra Club director was also concerned about the potential effect of numerous package plants being discharged into Brushy Creek. He said while the NMCV Taylor Property Investors plant would discharge into section 1244 of the creek, which is currently in compliance with water quality standards, nearby section 1244C is considered impaired due to high bacteria levels.
“The Sierra Club has serious concerns that the addition of up to 150,000 gallons per day of additional wastewater — even if treated to certain levels — plus any storm water from the area that is being developed could not only impact 1244C but further impair 1244 itself, which eventually discharges into the Brazos River,” he said. “There could be serious downstream consequences, which must be addressed. Issues around bacteria, dissolved oxygen levels, nutrients and phosphorus must all be addressed given existing impairments downstream.”
Safeguards are needed, Reed added.
“More development will come to the area, and there will need to be more infrastructure to treat wastewater, including some in the Brushy Creek watershed,” Reed told TCEQ. “However, rather than granting every small WWTP designed for a single subdivision, TCEQ must assess the opportunity for more centralized treatment options, and properly assess water quality and quantity in the area.”
