Clean Water In the News

By Chris Robinson The Facts

Published April 4, 2006

A recent report by a consumer action group alleges hundreds of Texas factories and utilities are guilty of regularly dumping more pollution into state waterways than allowed.

The report, “Troubled Waters,” identified 14 of 19 major facilities in Brazoria County, such as factories and governmental entities, for violations of their Clean Water Act permits. Included in the report are cases of excess feces, toxic chemicals or substances such as dirt released into waterways.

However, a number of local cases involved violations of excess water, which industry officials said had no negative impact on the environment.

Statewide, the analysis found 348 factories and utilities exceeded their permits more than 2,000 times in an 18-month period. The report, by Environment Texas Research & Policy Center, the environmental arm of the Texas Public Interest Research Group, was based on the Environmental Protection Agency’s own data. It was released last month and can be viewed online at www.environmenttexas.org.

Luke Metzger, spokesman for Environment Texas Research & Policy Center, argues there is little incentive for companies to adhere to the law because of lax enforcement by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

“They don’t consistently hold violators accountable and penalties are often low. As a result, it’s easier to pay a fine occasionally — if you’re even fined — than to come up to code,” Metzger said.

TCEQ is about two years into the process of an enforcement review process, but spokeswoman Lisa Wheeler said it’s still in the preliminary review stage and there is no deadline.

TCEQ spokeswoman Andrea Morrow said the review process is lengthy.

“The rule-making process is very involved. It involves public input, coming up with draft rules, publishing the draft rules, soliciting input from the public and having public meetings on them, using a public committee and revising them again,” she said. “This is just part of a very long process.”

The review isn’t in reaction to the report, Morrow said, but has been under way for some time.

Metzger said few genuine changes have resulted from the enforcement review process, particularly in regard to the penalty policy.

“It’s the No. 1 issue in public comments to TCEQ,” Metzger said. “It’s not clear whether they’re ever going to change that. It’s been years and years and who knows how much taxpayer dollars, but little has resulted from it this far.”

Several violations in the report were for excess amounts of water being released which, in some cases, was due to severe storms flooding the system. Still, industry officials maintained the extra amount had no negative impact on the receiving waterways, such as the Brazos River and man-made ditches.

Shin-Etsu Silicones of America in Freeport had several violations for excess water releases, according to the report, but Plant Manager Greg Heausler said it was only because company officials underestimated the amount of water the plant would release each day when they applied for EPA permits.

After they started up the plant in early 2003, Heausler said, they discovered the discharge amount was larger than anticipated. No contaminants are in the water, and it isn’t at an adverse temperature, he said, it’s just in a larger quantity than the permits allow.

“We would like to maintain that we didn’t add any pollution to the water, we just put more water than was necessary,” he said. “Some people are concerned because the saying, ‘The secret to pollution is dilution,’ by adding more water, but not in our case.”

The city of West Columbia had a similar case, in which City Manager Roger Mumby said the city’s violations were the result of rainwater seeping into the sewer system, so the treatment plant had an excess outflow. He noted the city is undergoing a sewer line replacement, which is about 60 percent complete and should resolve this issue in the future.

Many local cities share the same fate with old sewer lines, Mumby said, adding that it’s not a question of keeping pollution out of waterways so much as keeping toilets working.

“Almost every city, at least in this area, has the same problem because of old sewer lines that break and crack,” Mumby said.

Mumby suggested the report focus more on serious offenders with primarily hazardous releases.

The city of Pearland, for example, had numerous reports of excess releases of feces. Representatives with the city of Pearland did not return repeated phone calls.

But to suggest the report should focus solely on “dangerous” pollutants is to miss the point of regulations, Metzger said.

“There’s a reason why they have limits on their permits on how much they can emit, whether it’s dirty rainwater or toxic mercury,” Metzger said. “The fact is, EPA and TCEQ deemed those emissions dangerous to public health.”

Dow Chemical Co. was also listed in the report as having released excesses of chemicals like chloroform, tetrachloroethylene and zinc.

Dow Texas Operations’ responsible care leader, Linda Bartholome, said in a statement that while 11 events are mentioned in the report, they believe one is due to rainfall from Tropical Storm Grace in August 2003, which resulted in flooding and caused a non-compliance of excess silt in Dow’s discharged water.

The remaining non-compliances are due to plant events at their site, the statement said.

“While we feel that our performance in meeting water quality requirements is quite good, our goal continues to be zero events, and we continue to review performance and drive improvements in our processes and operations in order to eliminate any plant events causing non-compliances,” Bartholome said in a statement.

Chris Robinson is a reporter for The Facts. Contact him at (979) 237-0151.