Williamson County

CURRENT ISSUES

Salado Creek Wastewater Permits •  Liberty Hill Algae Pollution

According to projections by the Texas State Demographer's office, Williamson County could be home to 1.3 million people by 2060 — roughly the same number of people living in Travis County now. Small towns have exploded into sprawling suburbs, and they've sometimes struggled to provide municipal services in an environmentally protective way. For more than a decade, the treated wastewater that Liberty Hill discharges into the South San Gabriel Rivers created a suffocating blanket of algae that stretched for miles downstream (shown in the photo at the top of this page). However, the amount of wastewater that Liberty Hill produces could be just a fraction of the wastewater that active and pending wastewater permits could discharge into Salado Creek. The decisions that Williamson County officials are making now are creating the infrastructure that the county' residents will have to live with for decades to come.

WHAT WE DO:  Save Texas Streams and our partners provided support for the efforts of Stephanie Ryder Morris (shown speaking at a 2022 TCEQ meeting) to get stricter requirements included in Liberty Hill's wastewater permit. Morris lived across the South San Gabriel from Liberty Hill's wastewater outlet, and she saw firsthand how it caused persistent and excessive algae growth in the river.