San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Utility seeks permit for wastewater plant
A private utility company accused of overpumping groundwater is seeking permission from the state to build a plant that would put 900,000 gallons of treated wastewater per day into Hemphill Creek in Hays County.
Aqua Texas, part of Pennsylvania-based company Aqua, has applied to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to operate a plant at 6397 Texas Highway 21, northeast of San Marcos.
According to the company’s application, the plant would be adjacent to an existing Aqua Texas treatment plant that serves the Sunset Oaks subdivision.
“The intent was to expand the treatment and disposal capacity of the Aqua Texas Sunset Oaks permit,” engineer Michael Bevilacqua wrote in the application, but because of site constraints, the new plant needs to be located on the other side of Hemphill Creek. That requires seeking a new permit, instead of expanding the existing one.
The company is asking to discharge up to 900,000 gallons per day of wastewater from the Upper Creek plant into an unnamed tributary that enters Hemphill Creek. The effluent would then travel to Morrison Creek, then into the Lower San Marcos River.
The site is vacant and “appears to have been used for livestock grazing,” according to the application. TCEQ officials have issued a draft permit, which includes a preliminary determination that existing water quality uses in the three waterways will not be impaired. The agency said there is “limited aquatic life use” in Hemphill Creek, while the designated uses for that segment of the San Marcos River are primary contact recreation, public water supply and high aquatic life use.
The Sunset Oaks wastewater treatment permit was first issued in 2017 and was most recently amended in 2021, according to TCEQ records. The most recent revision permitted a four-phase expansion, allowing the plant to ultimately reach an average annual flow limit of 1.25 million gallons per day. That wastewater travels the same route from Hemphill Creek to Morrison Creek to the San Marcos River. Three notices of alleged violations were issued for that facility in November, two moderate and one minor, records show. The combined plants would discharge more than 2 million gallons of treated wastewater per day; that’s enough to fill about three Olympic-sized swimming pools.
In July, state Sen. Judith Zaffrini, D-Laredo, asked TCEQ officials to hold a public meeting on the new permit, citing concerns expressed by her constituents. Her district stretches from the Mexican border to Austin and includes part of Hays County, where the proposed plant would be located.
But only two opponents — the current and former executive directors of the San Marcos River Foundation, an environmental advocacy group — spoke at a sparsely attended meeting on Texas State University’s campus in San Marcos on Thursday night.
“If you wanted nobody to show up, this would be the perfect place to have such a meeting,” Dianne Wassenich, former director of the nonprofit, told TCEQ staff, citing the lack of free parking and relative inaccessibility of the college campus. Even if people tried to show up, they might not be able to find it, she said.
Wassenich said she’s concerned there isn’t sufficient monitoring to ensure that creeks and rivers can handle the amount of wastewater being put into them as the number of treatment plants in the area increases.
“I’m very concerned about the segment of the San Marcos River where this effluent is going to end up,” she said, questioning the agency’s models for whether the water can actually be assimilated.
“We can’t keep adding so much wastewater without affecting clarity,” Wassenich said. She asked if the TCEQ is looking at not just individual treatment plants but the cumulative effects of permits being approved near San Marcos. She cited concerns about the amount of dissolved oxygen in the wastewater; aquatic life relies on oxygen in the water and suffers when that level drops.
Virginia Parker, the river foundation’s current director, said she’d like to see higher standards for the effluent allowed by the permit, as well as requiring the company to reuse treated water.
“We have got to get a handle on the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus in these river and creeks,” she said. “We have got to start using this wastewater for a better purpose,” she said. Nitrogen and phosphorous are beneficial for plant growth, making them good for fertilizing fields, but threatening to aquatic systems where they can cause algal blooms.
Wassenich also told the agency that the company “has a terrible reputation” in the area, and said that makes it hard to trust that it will responsibly operate a wastewater plant, especially one that won’t be monitored at all times.
Aqua Texas is currently suing the Hays Trinity Groundwater Conservation District, which is tasked with managing groundwater in western Hays County. The district fined the company a $448,710 for allegedly pumping nearly double the amount of water that its permit allowed in drought conditions in 2022. It also said it would not renew the company’s permit if an agreement wasn’t reached.
In December, the company sued the district in federal court, accusing it of unfair and unequal treatment.
Aqua Texas provides water and wastewater services to about 275,000 people in 53 Texas counties, according to its website. According to TCEQ records, Aqua Texas is the owner or owner-operator of 14 entities in Hays County, including both water and wastewater systems.