DRIPPING SPRINGS — With much anticipation, after a long-awaited period, the city of Dripping Springs has been given the green light to expand its wastewater treatment facility.

This comes after the Texas Supreme Court ruled in support of the city’s wastewater discharge permit Friday, April 11, which has been a long time coming as, in 2019, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) issued a wastewater discharge permit for the city of Dripping Springs. However, for the past few years, the city has been involved in a lawsuit from the Save Our Springs Alliance (SOS), a local environmental group, regarding the permit — the alliance had filed the lawsuit, asking the court to rule against the permit.

“The consequences of the delay due to the lawsuit have been difficult,” Mayor Bill Foulds said during a press conference April 15. “We’ve been able to work with it, but the city is still growing regardless of the permit. Many developers in the area have had to implement temporary wastewater treatment plants that have resulted in higher costs of housing.”

The city of Dripping Springs needed the permit issued by TCEQ in order to expand the South Regional Wastewater System, which is currently a 162,500-gallon per-day (GPD) wastewater treatment facility that “uses an activated sludge process to treat wastewater and subsurface drip irrigation for effluent disposal,” according to the city’s website.

The expansion will allow the city to continue using treated effluent produced by the plant to irrigate parks and open space as many of these spaces are currently using drinking water for irrigation purposes, which, according to the city, is not sustainable or the right long-term solution.

Expanding the wastewater facility also comes from the growth that Hays County, and Dripping Springs, has seen over the last 15 years. To address this, the city has been looking at ways to ensure there is sufficient water and wastewater infrastructure in place, which generally, there are two ways that can be provided: each individual subdivision could develop its own sewage collection and treatment system and obtain a permit for effluent disposal or a  regional collection and treatment system could be developed.

In 2013, the city council initiated a comprehensive study, evaluating current and future wastewater infrastructure demand, in an effort to take a proactive step in meeting the needs of the community. This was supported by the Dripping Springs Economic Development Committee, which is composed of respected business and community leaders. It was determined from the study for the city to move forward with plans to expand its existing wastewater treatment facility to provide necessary additional capacity.

As part of its research, the city carefully examined its options for wastewater treatment and disposal — the two most common are discharge to waters through a Texas Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (TPDES) permit or land application under a TLAP permit. The city ultimately filed for a TPDES discharge permit, allowing for the expansion of its current wastewater treatment system to a permitted future capacity of 822,500 GPD.

SOS’ argument was that the permit violated a subset of the state of Texas’ water quality standards that apply to Onion Creek, but it was ultimately determined through the court’s ruling that their argument “was simply not supported by the science,” according to the city.

“The main thrust of the Save Our Springs’ argument was that the dissolved oxygen level dropped from 6.77 milligrams per liter to 5.0 milligrams per liter and because of that drop, it simply would cause pollution and would be detrimental to the water quality,” explained David Tuckfield, special counsel. “But the fact is, the science shows that you can have a drop in dissolved oxygen in that range and still maintain your water quality. They were focusing on one parameter and just looking at math, as opposed to what those numbers really meant for water quality, and just said, ‘Well, the numbers are different. Therefore, there’s a problem,’ and that’s just not the case.”

As Onion Creek has been the main concern, Foulds said that the city does not anticipate having to release water into that waterway.

“If it were to happen, I guess, the best way it’s been described to me, is that it would be in a catastrophic situation when all of the storage is completely full [and] it’s a very long, extended rainy time. At that point, if there were no other options, we would have to discharge. What gets lost there is at that point, Onion Creek is going to be flowing at such a high level. It’s very doubtful there would be any change in the water and they don’t take that into account in the permitting process,” the mayor explained. “But if Onion Creek is already flowing with a lot of rainwater and mud that’s washed off from the shores and the reality is our treated wastewater is cleaner than that, we are treating our wastewater to a level that is safe for human contact. It’s not consumption, but it’s safe for human contact, so it’s a very high treatment level that we are doing.”

Tuckfield added that the likelihood is minimal that it would happen, but if it does, there are procedures in place to prevent it from happening again.

The city of Dripping Springs has been awaiting a decision from the Texas Supreme Court for a while and, according to Tuckfield, it was a complicated case.

“It took a long time for the Court of Appeals to make their decision, again because it was a complicated case. Then, it got to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court has two steps. One, you have a petition for review whether the court decides to hear the case or not and the court … asked for an additional briefing just on the question of whether they should hear the case, so we had a whole extra set of briefing that you don’t normally see just to decide whether they are going to hear the case,” he explained. “Once they decided to hear the case, then they wanted a second set of briefings, so it did take a little bit longer than a normal case might to get through the process, but also because it’s a complicated issue.”

The improvements to the city’s wastewater system are anticipated to be complete in 2027.

To learn more about the city of Dripping Springs’ South Regional Wastewater System and the Texas Supreme Court’s decision, visit the city’s website.