By now we’ve told you many times that Liberty Hill has been causing the worst wastewater pollution in Texas by dumping its treated sewage into the South San Gabriel River. Phosphorus that remains in the city’s wastewater after treatment has fed an algae explosion in the river, which has very little of this element that’s a common ingredient in many plant fertilizers. The result is that for more than a decade, the South San Gabriel has been covered by an algae blanket that at times has stretched for more than three miles downstream from Liberty Hill’s discharge outlet.
But the problem could get even worse. The same thing that’s still happening on the South San Gabriel River in Williamson County could happen on more than 20 other streams — including Barton Creek — if the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) approves a new wastewater discharge permit on any of them. What these pristine streams have in common is that they all have extremely low levels of naturally occurring phosphorus. And so far, TCEQ has refused to issue discharge permits that would require phosphorus in wastewater to be reduced to a level that won’t detonate an algae bomb on these streams.
That’s why SBCA’s top priority in the current legislative station is Senate Bill 1911, which would protect the last remaining pristine streams in Texas from wastewater pollution. SB 1911 has three key elements:
• Permits for domestic wastewater would be regulated on the state’s last pristine streams, defined as having extremely low levels of naturally occurring phosphorus. The streams that meet the bill’s numerical criteria have already been listed, with most of them located in the Hill Country (see map below).
• On these streams, TCEQ would continue issuing permits that allow treated wastewater to be irrigated onto land.
• But also on these streams, TCEQ would discontinue issuing permits that allow treated wastewater to be discharged into streams.
SB 1911 was filed by Senator Sarah Eckhardt, a longtime friend of SBCA. It’s been assigned to the Senate Committee on Water, Agriculture, & Rural Affairs, and we’re eagerly awaiting a hearing on the bill to be scheduled. SB 1911 is based on HB 4146, which was filed by Representative Tracy O. King in the 2021 legislative session and passed by the House on an 82-61 vote. SBCA was one of four groups that also submitted the Pristine Streams Petition to TCEQ in 2022.
The creator of the Pristine Streams proposal was the late Sky Marshal Jones-Lewey, a renowned water educator and advocate at Nueces River Authority. You can read more about Sky in this Hill Country Alliance tribute, and you can read her case for protecting pristine streams in this editorial. In Sky’s words: “The population of Texas continues to boom; we hear about it daily. Most people don’t think about the accompanying surge in the volume of wastewater that will come too and must be managed. Those of us who’ve been working to protect rivers for years most definitely think about that problem.”
