Should larger cities be allowed to protest the discharge permit requests by smaller towns? State Rep. Jason Isaac (R-Dripping Springs) doesn’t think so, and he filed a state House bill to bar larger cities from protesting discharge applications from smaller municipalities.
House Bill 3004, if approved, would keep larger cities from protesting Texas Commission on Environmental Quality applications for the purposes of environmental discharge by small cities.
Isaac said he introduced a similar bill during the 2015 legislative session, but it died on the Senate floor.
In an emailed statement, Isaac said small municipalities across Texas are experiencing “phenomenal growth.”
“When these small cities attempt to prepare for future growth by seeking responsible wastewater management precautions, their large, urban neighbors with nearly unlimited tax dollars at their disposal try to interfere to force their anti-development, anti-growth agenda on the communities around them,” Isaac said.
Although the bill would bar formal opposition to a discharge permit, it would have no effect on a municipality’s authority to pass resolutions in support of or opposition to another municipality’s application for environmental discharge, Isaac said.
Isaac said “it’s simple hypocrisy” that municipalities like Austin, which might have lower standards for water treatment than neighborhoods such as the Belterra neighborhood, in which Isaac lives, can protest the TCEQ applications of those neighborhoods, or any other municipality, which may have better water treatment standards.
“In Texas you can either get a storage permit or a discharge permit,” Isaac said. “Belterra, my neighborhood, has a discharge permit even though we have never discharged because we haven’t needed to.”
Isaac said municipalities “should be at or above the same standards (as the city whose application they are protesting).”
Isaac said at press time he isn’t aware if the bill has been referred to a House committee for hearings.
