Fort Worth needs a new sewage plant to keep up with growth. Why are the plans on hold?
Fort Worth’s efforts to build its first new wastewater treatment plant since the 1950s will be stalled by opposition from residents and potentially the Tarrant Regional Water District due to a state agency decision on Wednesday.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality granted a contested case hearing to Martha Leonard, who has served on the Tarrant Regional Water District’s board since 2006 and owns property adjacent to where the sewage plant is planned on Mary’s Creek in west Fort Worth. The hearing is similar to a civil trial in state district court and can take months if not more than a year to resolve.
Because Leonard owns property within a mile of where treated wastewater would be discharged into the creek, Leonard will be affected differently than the general public, said commission chair Jon Niermann. Other Fort Worth-area residents requested hearings but were denied due to their distance from the facility’s planned location at 11091 Chapin Road.
Leonard expressed concerns about how the treated sewage could negatively impact water quality where her family recreates and lead to potentially high concentrations of chemicals near the dams on her property, according to TCEQ documents. Those issues, along with questions about whether the plant will protect the health of nearby residents and wildlife, will be addressed during the hearing process.
Rapid population and business growth in west Fort Worth has increased the demand for wastewater treatment capacity, according to Chris Harder, the city’s water director. Designing, constructing and operating a new facility will take at least six years even without significant delays in the permit process, Harder said prior to the TCEQ decision.
“We’re going to need that extra capacity in the near term, not necessarily in the far term,” Harder said. “If we don’t get to that capacity, then we’re going to have to make a lot of improvements to the collection system between west Fort Worth and the Village Creek facility. That’s a span of 30 miles.”
The city has owned the 100-acre plot next to Mary’s Creek since 2011 and began pursuing a wastewater discharge permit in 2016. The city earned a draft permit in March 2020, indicating the TCEQ’s initial approval of Fort Worth’s plans to discharge up to 15 million gallons of treated wastewater per day into the creek without negatively affecting water quality in the Trinity River.
But complaints raised by the Tarrant Regional Water District may further complicate the permitting process for Fort Worth. District officials have raised concerns that Fort Worth’s discharge of treated wastewater may affect water quality in the Clear Fork of the Trinity River, which is used for recreational purposes by residents.
Last year, the water district submitted water quality modeling showing that nutrients in the treated sewage could cause blue-green algae blooms under certain conditions. The algae can produce chemicals that are toxic to animals and cause skin and respiratory irritation in humans who are exposed to it, the Star-Telegram previously reported.
Attorneys for TRWD argue that because the district has jurisdiction over water quality in the Clear Fork, they qualify as an “affected person” under Texas law. But environmental commissioners aren’t so sure.
Going against recommendations by other TCEQ officials to grant a hearing, Niermann and fellow commissioner Bobby Janecka asked a state court to determine whether the TRWD qualifies as “affected.”
“It appears that the district’s interest in the Clear Fork is, at its closest, more than seven miles downstream of the proposed (discharge),” Niermann said. “Unless the district can show something more than that, I don’t believe it can be considered an affected person, but I’m a little bit on the fence about this one.”
Behind the scenes, water district officials say they’re in talks with Fort Worth to resolve the issue before reaching the contested case hearing stage, according to Rachel Ickert, TRWD’s chief water resources officer.
“I think we have more shared goals than disagreements, and I’m pretty optimistic that we’re going to come up with a good solution,” Ickert said. “Our disagreement really is with the TCEQ and that they didn’t model what we consider to be far enough downstream when they did their analysis of the discharge.”
Proposals from the water district have included asking Fort Worth to use the facility’s water for irrigation, therefore eliminating the need to discharge it into Mary’s Creek, or to let TRWD pay for pipelines to transfer the majority of the wastewater effluent to another lake so it can be more diluted and provide water supply for the region, according to Woody Frossard, the district’s environmental director.
Since the TCEQ hosted a public meeting about the wastewater treatment facility last October, discussions between the water district and Fort Worth are “much further along” but no agreement has been reached, Ickert said.
Although Fort Worth is willing to discuss discharging treated wastewater into other locations along the Trinity, the city is still pursuing its primary location at Mary’s Creek, Harder said. Fort Worth believes in the plant’s location and the city’s own modeling showing that the discharge of treated sewage is protective of water quality, he added.
“It’s nice that the TCEQ is standing behind their permit, but we also stand behind this plant that we’re going to be building,” Harder said. “The water that will be leaving this plant will be at the highest quality that we can actually treat from a technical standpoint.”
This story has been updated with information about Martha Leonard’s position with the Tarrant Regional Water District.
This story was originally published November 4, 2021 at 9:25 AM.
