Photo by Rick Kosteke / Barton Creek Time Stream
The Barton Creek Habitat Preserve is the largest expanse of protected nature on the creek, but developer Chris Milam thinks it’s missing something — a high-rise luxury hotel and a 10,000-seat outdoor concert venue. Milam plans to build his White Rocks resort on a site that's in the middle of the Habitat Preserve and uphill from Barton Creek. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has already issued a draft wastewater irrigation permit for MIlam’s development. TCEQ is holding a public meeting on the permit this Tuesday. SBCA urges you to attend the meeting, where you’ll be able to tell Milam’s representatives and TCEQ's staff that the Barton Creek Habitat Preserve — which protects the endangered golden-cheeked warbler — is the wrong place for this wastewater permit.
TCEQ issues two kinds of wastewater permits — TPDES permits that allow treated wastewater to be discharged into a stream, and TLAP permits that allow it to be irrigated onto land. Because discharge permits can cause pollution in pristine streams like Barton Creek, SBCA supports the increased use of irrigation permits. Unfortunately, we’ve seen several recent applications for these permits in bad locations.
The latest example is the irrigation permit application filed last summer by developer Chris Milam for his proposed White Rocks luxury resort on State High 71 between Oak Hill and Bee Cave. Milam wants to build an upscale hotel, multimillion-dollar condos, and a 10,000-seat amphitheater on top of a tall hill between two ravines that drain to Barton Creek. And he wants to build an onsite sewage facility that would spread up to 120,000 gallons of treated wastewater per day on irrigation fields around the property.
