In Booming Central Texas, Wastewater Is Polluting Rivers and Streams

Editor s Note This article originally appeared at Inside Surroundings News a nonprofit independent news organization that covers setting force and the circumstances It is republished with permission Sign up for their newsletter here Margo Denke set out to rally the town when she learned that a Christian youth camp planned to build a wastewater rehabilitation plant and discharge its effluent into the pristine Hill Country creek that ran through her small ranch Denke a graduate of Harvard Medicinal School who moved to the Hill Country in printed fliers put them in Ziploc bags and tied them to her neighbors cattle gates in the tiny area of Tarpley population A coalition of families pooled tools hired a lawyer and dug in for a yearslong battle Theirs was one of plenty of similar struggles that have unfolded in latest years across Central Texas where protection of creeks and rivers from treated wastewater discharge often falls to shoestring area groups as an onslaught of population advance and progress pushes ever deeper into the countryside All this would have been destroyed Denke noted in April as she surveyed a spring-fed stretch of Commissioners Creek Raising the money to fight this is not easy But you have to you can t let this just slide by Eventually the camp owner who did not respond to a request for comment from Inside Atmosphere News agreed in settlement negotiations not to discharge into the creek Instead they would spray their treated effluent over their own property an increasingly popular means of wastewater disposal In exchange the neighbors would drop their opposition to the two-story dam the camp erected for a private lake and waterpark on little Commissioners Creek I m trying to stay positive about it Denke revealed It was a huge win But the battle never ends amid the rapid pace of progress in Texas Several miles downstream another subdivision developer wants to treat wastewater and discharge it into Hondo Creek And in a neighboring watershed another society group in recent times stopped another Christian youth camp from discharging into the Sabinal River Similar stories repeat throughout Central Texas where two decades of booming population expansion have come with a massive increase in domestic wastewater mostly human sewage The effluent from wastewater restoration plants appears clean and clear but it contains high levels of organic nutrients that can cause algae blooms and devastate native aquatic ecosystems when dumped into streams and rivers Stephanie Morris wades through an algae bloom on the South Fork San Gabriel River near her house in Leander Dylan Baddour Inside Atmosphere News Unfortunately society at large has no idea revealed Jeff Back a staff scientist at Baylor University who has studied nutrient defilement in Texas waterways for years Developers want to continue to do their business but they need to be responsible Now as the state Legislature meets for its biennial session advocates for water protection are supporting a bill that would prohibit the greater part new discharges of treated wastewater into the state s last stretches of pristine rivers and streams as defined by measured nutrient levels Filed by state Sen Sarah Eckhardt a Democrat from Austin it s the latest iteration of a bill that groups have tried repeatedly without success to pass in Texas It wouldn t ban improvement along pristine streams It would just require other outlets for treated wastewater beside the natural waterways Plenty of solutions are available on the territory from systems for onsite re-use to healing methods that remove the nutrients from wastewater People have to understand that it s not going to be free Back disclosed People want to do everything as cheaply as practicable The luxury of doing things cheaply might not last forever As Texas cities begin to outgrow their water supplies and state leaders increasingly recognize shortages looming on the horizon there may come an end to the days of showering lawns with drinking water while dumping treated effluent into rivers for disposal This effluent should be considered a asset not a nuisance to get rid of announced David Venhuizen a civil engineer in Austin who sells hardware for on-site water reuse It could be used to irrigate and fertilize the turf grass of parks sportsfields golf courses and private lawns which make up the bulk of municipal summertime water use in Texas In existing cities such reuse has proven prohibitively expensive because plumbing from wastewater therapy plants is expensive to run out to individual customers New improvement however could be built to incorporate on-site wastewater reuse reported Venhuizen His system buried underground like a septic system can treat a household s wastewater then drip it beneath the lawn It could also be adapted at neighborhood scale for subdivisions to create a decentralized organization of wastewater medicine and local redistribution But the breathless pace of suburban sprawl in Texas leaves no time to pause and make systemic changes Instead Texas cities run pipelines to distant aquifers to meet the ever-growing necessities of new neighborhoods that will use largest part of their drinking water on lawns while piping away their effluent for healing and discharge into a creek We re going to continue to rely on extraction instead of any regenerative kind of water systems noted Venhuizen on a rocking chair in his backyard fitted with rainwater collection tanks and covered in native plants The madness has to stop Stephanie Morris bought a house on the South Fork San Gabriel River miles north of Austin in She wouldn t have done it if she knew what the beautiful river would become When she and her family moved in Morris mentioned the neighbors were already exhausted by a long-running battle with the neighboring city of Liberty Hill over its discharge of treated wastewater into the river about a quarter mile upstream Back then Liberty Hill had about residents and its discharge created relatively minor algae problems in the river Then its population exploded like various other small cities of Central Texas Now almost people live in Liberty Hill the bulk of them relying on the South Fork San Gabriel for their wastewater disposal necessities There s a hell of a lot more people pissing in the pond reported Morris a high-risk labor and delivery nurse as she trudged through the green mucky river in high rubber boots Every year things would get worse as their volume increased All those nutrients primarily from human waste have caused the riverbed to choke up entirely with algae at times extending three to five miles downstream and burying native ecosystems When the algae dies it sinks and rots in heaps of black stinking muck Year by year Morris became increasingly involved until she spent all of her free time trekking the riverbed and taking photos of the destruction to show to her elected representatives commissioners of the TCEQ and judges at the administrative law courts in Austin As a effect the TCEQ has twice reduced the concentrations of phosphorus that the Liberty Hill plant is permitted to discharge although its overall volume continues to increase The river looks better in the present day than it did several years ago Morris explained But the fight has nearly exhausted her This has cost so much time and money it s not even funny she reported Private citizens should not have to be enforcing the environmental standards of the state The story of the South Fork San Gabriel and the pictures that circulated online jolted other communities to fight against proposed discharges in their areas mentioned Annalisa Peace executive director of the Greater Edwards Aquifer Alliance a group that helps its member organizations challenge the proposed discharge permits in the counties that overlie the Edwards and Trinity aquifers It s incumbent upon the citizens and GEAA to raise the money for the legal fees to do all this Peace noted It seems to be that the burden is placed on the average citizen The bulk new wastewater sources come from new housing subdivisions and the municipal utility districts that are established to serve them she reported Others are commercial projects from summer camps to music venues that plan to treat their own wastewater Much of the new construction especially near pristine streams takes place outside of any city s jurisdiction so it faces little regulation or oversight Previous attempts to pass statewide regulations of discharges into waterways have repeatedly failed declared Peace who has worked with GEAA for years Much of the resistance comes from lobbying by major homebuilding companies that are making big money off explosive population advancement in Texas It s the big nationals that we re really seeing the the bulk intransigence and the majority organized opposition from she mentioned They don t like regulation The Texas Association of Builders declined to comment on this summary Peace wishes for a law restricting wastewater discharge into all Texas waterways But she ll settle for the current bill which protects just the remaining pristine segments and provides exemptions for cities and river bureaucrats Outside the Texas Legislature groups have had more success challenging individual permits Such was the incident on the Upper Sabinal River where another Christian youth camp operated by the national nonprofit Young Life proposed in to build a wastewater remedy plant that would discharge into the river Local landowners rallied They gathered signatures on a petition and hired a lawyer to challenge the discharge permits Faced with an extensive delay in state administrative courts Young Life opted to settle instead Young Life did not respond to a request for comment Once this became a high-profile issue they were willing to look at alternatives disclosed Jeff Braun a landowner on the upper Sabinal River and a spokesperson for the Bandera Canyonlands Alliance which fought the permit I think it hit a chord with a lot of people that are native Texans because they all love these iconic streams In an announcement of the settlement agreement in August Young Life noted it would reuse greater part of its wastewater on-site for irrigation rather than discharging into the river Regulators call this practice land application and it s growing in popularity By banning discharges into pristine streams the bill in the Legislature would effectively force developers in those areas to use land application for wastewater disposal Although the practice is less impactful to waterways than direct discharge it can still do damage Mike Clifford technical director at the Greater Edwards Aquifer Alliance declared that opposition from locality groups has already pushed multiple developers to seek land application permits The matter now is we just have too plenty of of these he explained They re popping up everywhere The TCEQ has issued ongoing permits for land application of treated wastewater according to online records and advancing permits for discharge SIGN UP FOR TEXAS OBSERVER EMAILS Get our latest in-depth reporting straight to your inbox Sign Up For example area groups are at present fighting a planned -seat amphitheater luxury hotel and condominium complex on acres nestled next to the Barton Creek Habitat Preserve on Barton Creek a pristine stream in Austin The complex would treat its own wastewater with land application permits to spray up to gallons per day of treated effluent onto its property Over time Clifford revealed the nutrient pollutants would accumulate until a big rainstorm washes them into Barton Creek About five miles upstream on Fitzhugh Road another proposed -person music venue wants to treat its own wastewater and discharge it into ponds near Barton Creek One remedy Clifford mentioned would be for Texas to require developers to add nutrient removal to their rehabilitation process It s just about money he explained Nutrient removal can double the cost of a wastewater cure plant With adequate commitment plenty of solutions exist Chosen could even be configured to make money that covers part of their costs For example chosen medication systems that remove nitrogen and phosphorus from water do it by growing algae which could be harvested and sold as fertilizer To avoid the buildup of nutrients where effluent is sprayed onto land grasses can be harvested and sold as hay Irrigation of hay for livestock is the largest water demand driving shortages in parts of Texas and the West Eventually water scarcity will compel urban planners to make use of wastewater rather than dumping into rivers declared Brian Zabcik advocacy director for the Save Barton Creek Association which has pushed for discharge protections on Texas pristine streams through several successive legislative sessions It s crazy that we re using our highest-quality drinking water to water our lawns and flush our toilets he commented It makes a lot more sense to use recycled wastewater for those purposes Texas might soon have to consider systemic changes as its population continues to boom temperatures continue to rise a multi-year drought persists and water shortages approach Already changes are beginning in small pockets Zabcik pointed to West Texas cities of Big Spring and El Paso national pioneers in the reuse of treated effluent for drinking water In Austin a new city authorities building features on-site wastewater medication and recycling for non-potable uses Consumer products exist to do the same at any home building or neighborhood These aren t radical practices mentioned Zabcik who lives on his grandparents ranch in Bell County Conserving water was part of life for previous generations in Texas For example Zabcik declared his grandparents grew a garden but not with their drinking water they ran in a pipe from their stock tank The water from their washing machine drained onto the lawn Passing protections on pristine streams won t ban evolution along those stretches Zabcik revealed It will just require new approaches to wastewater use Although they remain costly for now prices may come down as necessity boosts demand for new affordable products The timeline will depend on whether Texas finds the political will to implement new wastewater systems in advance or if it waits for scarcity conditions to force its hand We ve got to reuse every drop Zabcik reported It s really stupid to be wasting wastewater The post In Booming Central Texas Wastewater Is Polluting Rivers and Streams appeared first on The Texas Observer