During a City Council meeting April 4, council approved a wastewater facilities agreement between the city and Cuncasha.
As per the agreement, Cuncasha will convey 6.79 acres to the city for the pond as well as easements for the construction of a wastewater line. In trade, the city will convey the same amount of acres to the company as well as a payment of $10,000 in order to assist with the relocation of a gate already existing on the property.
Why this happened
The city aims to use beneficial reuse—reusing treated wastewater for irrigation—and avoid discharging treated wastewater into creeks, according to Ginger Faught, deputy city administrator.
For beneficial reuse facilities, the city must have 20 million gallons of reclaimed water storage. An existing pond in Caliterra is 12 million gallons, and the inclusion of a new pond will provide an additional 15 million gallons of storage, according to Faught.
Wastewater woes
In 2015, the city of Dripping Springs filed for a Texas Pollutant Discharge Elimination System discharge permit. The state permit would allow the city to release and reuse wastewater.
The city didn’t receive the permit until December 2022, after an El Paso court ruled in the city’s favor after a lawsuit was filed against them in 2019 from Save Our Springs Alliance, an environmental advocacy group. SOS has filed for a rehearing in that same court. Briefs were due to the court Jan. 28, and the court will announce this year if it will rehear the case.
SOS filed the initial lawsuit against the city in 2019 after the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality granted the city the permit to prevent the treated water from entering the city’s proposed discharge point in Walnut Springs Creek.
For more information on wastewater facilities in Dripping Springs, visit www.cityofdrippingsprings.com.
