Posted: Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:50 AM - 9,610 Readers

By: Asher Price

Earlier this month I wrote about efforts by cities along the Highland Lakes to get the state environmental agency to repeal a ban on discharges of treated sewage into the lakes.

Some cities and counties are now preparing to tell the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality not to overturn that ban. At Travis County Commissioners Court today, for example, commissioners voted to ask the TCEQ to preserve the ban.

The discharge issue gets at wider questions of development and water use in the Hill Country. For example, earlier this year, the TCEQ gave permission to a subdivision to discharge treated effluent into a creek that feeds the Barton Springs portion of the Edwards Aquifer. (That permit is now being challenged in court).

Now the Protect Lake Travis Association, which has historically opposed treated sewage discharges along the Highland Lakes, is asking its members to oppose a proposal by the City of Burnet to expand its wastewater treatment plant. The City of Burnet proposal, which will go before the TCEQ, could lead to a discharge expansion from a maximum of 726,000 gallons per day to an annual average flow not to exceed 1,700,000 gallons per day. The effluent could be discharged to a creek that feeds Lake Travis.

The cities proposing to discharge the effluent say it’s treated to levels cleaner than lake water, and they have argued that the lakes could benefit from more water, especially during drought.