Clean Water In the News

Texas leads the nation in the number of treatment plants and industrial facilities that fail to meet pollution standards for the wastewater they dump into rivers and streams, according to a report released Thursday.

The report, Troubled Waters, found that 318, or about 53 percent, of the state's major industrial and wastewater plants failed Clean Water Act standards in at least one of 12 reporting periods in 2005.

Twenty-four plants failed water quality standards for at least half the reporting periods, including Cibolo Creek Municipal Authority's wastewater system, which failed in all 12.

Nationally, more than 3,600 plants failed pollution standards at least once. Houston's Harris County led the pack with 96 facilities, more than four times that of any other county in the nation.

"With so many facilities dumping so much pollution, no one should be surprised that nearly half of America's waterways are unsafe for swimming and fishing," Environment Texas' J.J. Karabias said.

The data were compiled by U.S. PIRG and released by Environment Texas on the banks of the San Antonio River in Brackenridge Park on Thursday. Nationally, the groups are lobbying for Congress to pass the Clean Water Restoration Act, which would strengthen water quality protection.

Although Texas tops the nation in the number of facilities that violate water pollution rules, it falls in the middle of the pack when looking at the percentage of facilities that do so. The list is topped by smaller New England states like Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Hampshire, all of which had more than 75 percent of their plants earning violations.

Locally, Environment Texas has been leading efforts to change state pollution laws that, the group claims, makes it profitable to pollute in Texas.

A 2003 state auditor's report that looked at 80 pollution cases backs that contention. The auditor found that state fines for the pollution cases totaled less than $1.7 million, but the facilities involved benefited more than $8.6 million by not complying with regulations.

Glenn Shankle, executive director of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, recommended changing the regulations to address the profit issue in 2006, but the commission has not adopted the recommendations. Agency spokeswoman Lisa Wheeler said the commission will likely take up the issue again early next year.

Rep. Mike Villarreal, D-San Antonio, who attended the news conference, promised to sponsor legislation next session to "take away the incentive for these worst polluters to make a profit at the expense of the rest of us."

It would be the fourth consecutive session such legislation is introduced, Environment Texas Director Luke Metzger said.

"Each time the Texas Chemical Council and others have been able to defeat the bill in committee," he said.

Thursday's report included a number of Texas chemical and refining facilities, but many of the worst violators are municipal or public utilities.

These include the Cibolo Creek Municipal Authority, which serves about 40,000 people in Schertz, Cibolo and the surrounding area.

The authority has been performing a major upgrade of its aging system to address the pollution problem. Wheeler said the upgrade was 98 percent complete when the agency did its last inspection in June. But she didn't know if the utility was in compliance with water quality standards.

"What is relevant is that in 2007, 96 percent of the Texas population is served by public water systems which meet all federal drinking water standards," she said. "Our drinking water is safe."