Wimberley considers sewage plant

Highlights

• Elevated E. coli levels have been detected in Cypress Creek.
• Some nearby homeowners want city to invest in a sewer system and wastewater plant.
• Some business owners say project will be too expensive.

On a recent hot afternoon in the downtown area of this growing Hill Country town, a keen nose could catch a whiff of something the slightest bit fetid.

The odor, some say, is due to leaks in the aging septic tanks beneath the town’s old-timey restaurants.

As long ago as 2012, city officials called the failing septics a nuisance to public health; elevated levels of E. coli have been detected in Cypress Creek, the pretty waterway that wends its way through the heart of the community before joining the Blanco River.

For a couple of years now, the city has set up a trailer downtown with public restrooms to alleviate the strain on the septics; Wimberley pays roughly a thousand dollars a month to haul out that waste, according to city administrator Don Ferguson.But what to do about the problem long-term has divided this town. City Council candidates who favored pressing ahead with a centralized sewer system and expanded treatment plant were ousted in the latest election by candidates seeking to delay the project and calling for further review. And a longtime resident instrumental in putting the popular Blue Hole park in city hands is now threatening the city with a federal lawsuit.

The issue echoes growing pains in other Hill Country towns. Dripping Springs, for example, is asking the state environmental agency for permission to discharge as many as 995,000 gallons of treated effluent per day into a tributary of Onion Creek, which ultimately feeds the Barton Springs portion of the Edwards Aquifer. Belterra, a Dripping Springs-area subdivision, already has another such permit to discharge into Bear Creek. In October, Buda officials announced they had ruled out Onion Creek as a discharge point for a planned expanded wastewater plant, even though it was cheaper than other options.

Instead, Buda officials decided to stick with a discharge to a tributary of Plum Creek in a decision that appeared political as much as anything else: Onion Creek runs through Buda, and its Barton Springs connection could have led to protracted opposition from city of Austin officials, who are opposed to the Dripping Springs discharge plan.

Overall, the population of Hays County could increase nearly threefold by 2060, according to estimates in the state water plan.

For years, Wimberley, a town long known for its charm, has wrestled with whether to invest in a wastewater treatment plant of its own.

Under the current proposal, the city would use treated wastewater — cleaned to a standard acceptable for human contact — to irrigate the playing fields of Blue Hole park; during wet periods, the plant could discharge the treated sewage into Cypress Creek.

Local environmentalists and some downriver neighbors had opposed the Wimberley proposed plant. They were concerned that the treated wastewater would lead to algae blooms in the river, said Gail Pigg, president of the Blanco River/Cypress Creek Water Association.

But last year her group agreed to withdraw its opposition after the city offered to treat the waste to higher standards and to try to cap the overall amount discharged into Cypress Creek.

Still, opposition remains from some owners of restaurants and shops on the square — the ones who will have to shoulder much of the cost of the project.

High counts of E. coli

A small wastewater treatment facility in Wimberley serves a nursing home and the Blue Hole park. Under a permit expansion favored by the old City Council, a new sewer system could add roughly 120 customers, mostly businesses, churches, hotels, restaurants and RV parks in the downtown area. The total project cost, including a plant capable of treating as many as 75,000 gallons per day, could come to roughly $6 million.

Many of the businesses “are typically family owned, small operations that would generally find it difficult to meet the financial obligations with some assistance,” noted a report by a special city-appointed committee finished in June.

Stopping short of endorsing the project, Gary Barchfeld, one of the new City Council members, said he is looking for a solution that is “environmentally sound and affordable.”

Tom Keyser, the owner of the creekside restaurant Ino’z and a supporter of the new City Council members, says he has spent $70,000 over the last 14 years to maintain his septic tank; he figures the sewer and wastewater plant project will cost him $12,000 per year.

Instead, says Keyser, the city should partner with Aqua Texas, an investor-owned company that already disposes of treated wastewater on golf courses in nearby Woodcreek; he estimates the cost of a central sewer system with Aqua will cost him half as much.

Critics of Aqua Texas who say the wastewater won’t be treated to the same standard as in Wimberley’s discharge permit.

Besides, Keyser says, “the supposed impact has never been proved in these waterways.”

But Meredith Miller, senior program coordinator at the Meadows Center for Water and the Environment at Texas State University, says that while “no bacterial source tracking has been done, which would undoubtedly confirm the sources of bacteria as human,” water quality modeling suggests the septic tanks in Wimberley “are sources of bacterial pollution.”

Counts of E. coli, which can lead to gastrointestinal illness and wound infections and is an indicator bacteria monitored for the possible presence of other harmful microbes, are not to exceed 126 colonies per 100 milliliters in recreational waterways, according to federal guidelines.

But in eight of the 11 samples taken at the confluence of Cypress Creek and the Blanco River between April 2012 and March 2014, the E. coli levels exceeded that number.

The numbers are worse at the intersection of Cypress Creek and Ranch Road 12, just as the creek passes the square: In February of 2014, the E. coli level was 2,000 colonies per 100 milliliters, according to data collected by the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority; in October of 2015, the level was 920 colonies.

“The word, ‘effluent,’ scares people”

The E coli levels concern Peter Way, whose family originally bought property along Cypress Creek, just downstream of the town square, in the 1940s.

It was Way, who in 2003 bought the property around Blue Hole, a beloved swimming hole upstream of the town square, for $3 million, agreeing to hold it for two years until the city raised enough money to buy it from him.

Now, says Way, who lives in Houston and spends weekends in Wimberley, his grandchildren sometimes cannot swim in the portion of the creek by his property because of concerns about bacteria, especially at times when creek flow is low and crowds are up at restaurants.

“When the city was tiny and we had just one restaurant, there wasn’t a problem,” he said. “Over the years, this has gotten to be a worse and worse problem.”

He said at least $100,000 budgeted for landscaping in the Blue Hole park has yet to be spent because the plantings depend on the use of the treated effluent for irrigation.

“The word, ‘effluent,’ scares people — but it’s multiple times purer than the water in the river,” he said. “The new council members need education about how important this is for the city, for the park and for the creek.”

And if the council doesn’t agree to go forward with a plan to prevent sewage from getting in the creek, he is threatening court action. In May his attorneys notified the city and three businesses that they are prepared to sue under violations of the Clean Water Act.

Way added: “They don’t want a federal judge to decide if restaurants can stay open and if toilets can be flushed.”

With a low-interest loan from the state on the table, there’s a good chance city officials will move forward with some sort of centralized sewer system.

“We’re moving cautiously,” Barchfeld said.

Ferguson, the city administrator, said the city council could make a decision in the next month about what to do

Taxonomy

• Sewage Treatment
• Wastewater Treatment
• Pollution
• Septic Tank