Photo: Plastic nurdle pollution. Credit: Hockadilly (CC BY-SA 2.0)
By Alex Ortiz
Maybe it’s the heat or maybe it’s the chance to slow down and take it easy — whatever the reason, Texans love to be in or near water, from fishing in the wetlands to swimming at the lake to wading in the creek.
When we’re enjoying water, we don’t always think about pollution, because it’s often invisible. But many surface waters in our rapidly developing and heavily industrialized state contain significant pollution and toxic chemicals, and others are at risk of degrading in the near future. This impacts our own health, like when a child gets sick from swallowing water rife with bacteria, as well as the health of wildlife and the entire ecosystem. So updating regulatory standards to reflect the latest science is imperative.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), the state agency that regulates surface waters, has a less-than-stellar history of protecting water. But it is currently updating its Surface Water Quality Standards — rules on how much pollution to allow in surface waters — and you can chime in.
Now is the time to tell TCEQ why water quality matters, and you can share your voice! [UPDATE: Our Action Alert has closed but you can still submit comments to the TCEQ until May 2, 2022. Follow links to their online form here.]
The Sierra Club Lone Star Chapter will soon submit comments to TCEQ urging it to revise past standards updates that harmed our waterways for the sake of “regulatory efficiency” and to strengthen the first ever proposed update on plastic pollution. Stay tuned for more news from the Lone Star Chapter as we continue covering the SWQS and impacts on local water bodies.
What Are Surface Water Quality Standards?
The federal Clean Water Act requires that states with authority over pollution discharges into surface waters update their standards every three years. TCEQ uses its “triennial” standards to decide how much pollution to allow in a given water body based on how the water body is used, such as for recreation, to supply drinking water, or as wildlife habitat. As part of this process, TCEQ can also set standards for a variety of pollutants, including organic and inorganic compounds, metals, and toxics.
For example, when TCEQ receives a new wastewater permit application, it can measure what guidelines and limitations to use when issuing the permit to make sure that the “receiving water” is not degraded by treated wastewater. This principle comes from federal law.
The TCEQ standards also inform the Total Maximum Daily Load program, which is used to rehabilitate polluted waters on the impaired waters list.
Concerns With Previous Updates
During the triennial process to update the standards, TCEQ can change the categories that classify how water bodies are used. The Sierra Club Lone Star Chapter is focusing its comments on past changes to these categories that allowed for more pollution in certain water bodies.
For example, in the 2000 standards, TCEQ split recreational uses between “noncontact recreation,” such as boating, and “contact recreation,” such as swimming. It gave more stringent standards limiting bacterial pollution for contact recreation waters because people would be more likely to ingest water and have a lot of physical contact with the water.
But in the 2010 standards, TCEQ split contact recreation waters into “primary contact recreation,” “secondary contact recreation 1,” and “secondary contact recreation 2.” Then with the 2014 standards, TCEQ again split “primary contact recreation” into “primary contact recreation 1” and “primary contact recreation 2.”
In TCEQ’s view, the further removed a water is from “primary contact recreation 1,” the more polluted it can be. So waters with a use of “primary contact recreation 2” can be more polluted with illness-causing bacteria even though they’re being used by people for primary contact recreation. Some waters designated for secondary contact recreation now can have as much bacterial pollution as what originally was allowed in noncontact recreation streams.
The Sierra Club Lone Star Chapter is urging TCEQ to update its categories to be more comprehensive, allowing for less pollution in water bodies that people use for any contact recreation. This would be a common-sense public health move.
Plastics and Nutrient Pollution
The recent proposed standards address a new type of pollution for the first time: plastics. Pre-production plastic pollution — often in the form of tiny plastic orbs called “nurdles” — can wreak havoc on wildlife in addition to transporting toxic materials. The new standards make a great first step in addressing pre-production plastic pollution, but don’t go far enough. For example, producers can avoid being subject to the regulation by simply claiming “infeasibility” of minimizing nurdle pollution. The worst plastic polluters would undoubtedly exploit this “easy out.” And, the standards only address visible nurdle pollution, which is insufficient by ignoring microplastics that aren’t visible to the naked eye.
As part of these proposed updated standards, TCEQ could also finally make progress on addressing phosphorus and nitrogen (nutrient) pollution. But it has again failed to do so. Nutrient pollution causes issues for people and wildlife, such as the harmful algal blooms often seen in the Hill Country that are responsible for making people sick and even killing several dogs.
Tackling this type of pollution is especially timely right now, given that TCEQ just rejected protecting Texas’ last remaining pristine streams from phosphorus pollution — and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency just released a memo urging states to address nutrient pollution as part of their triennial standards reviews.
Next Steps
Now that TCEQ has published its draft Surface Water Quality Standards in the Texas Register, it is accepting public comments and will hold an in-person public hearing May 2. After this, TCEQ commissioners will either approve, disapprove, or amend the proposed standards. Once approved, TCEQ will then send the standards to the EPA for federal review and approval.
Be sure to share your input with TCEQ before commissioners make their decision! Because standards can remain enforced for years, these current proposed updates can have big consequences for the health of these waterways and the wildlife and people who use them.