Waco pledges to address concerns about future sewer plant

At a Waco City Council work session Tuesday, staffers said they have met individually with neighbors concerned about odors, noise, visual impact, traffic and pollution risk on the river, and they outlined steps to minimize those impacts.

The city in June bought the 150-acre proposed plant site at the end of Buster Chatham Road, just outside the Waco city limits. The site search followed an April 2019 study to explore a new sewer plant to handle ongoing growth in the China Spring area.

Many residents in the unincorporated Chalk Bluff neighborhood say they were not aware of the plans until the last couple of weeks. A neighborhood group has created a Facebook page to express concerns, including the lack of communication from Waco, the possible odor and noise from the plant, the increased traffic on the small county roads and the possibility of sewage spilling into and polluting the Brazos River.

During the hour-long council discussion Tuesday, water utilities director Lisa Tyer and council addressed many of those issues.

Tyer said any plans for the plant are far in the future: Construction likely would not begin before 2032, and operations at the plant would not begin until the end of 2034.

She also said waste from the plant will not end up in the river. The solids, which make up only 3% of the waste processed at treatment plants, will be hauled off to Waco’s central wastewater plant to be repurposed into soil additives and won’t be put into the river. The remaining effluent water will be treated, disinfected and run through a wetlands as it is at Bull Hide Creek treatment plant near Lorena.

Several residents signed up to speak at the business session of the council Tuesday evening.

Gail and Mark Blanpied live in Chalk Bluff and own a pecan orchard, Rascoe Pecans, adjacent to the planned plant.

Mark Blanpied told the council Tuesday that he was concerned about the size of the property the city purchased and the impact construction will have on the small community nearby. He called the purchase of property “an invasion” of the rural neighborhood.

Chalk Bluff resident Jeanna Maughan told the council she was concerned about the lack of communication from the city regarding the plans for the plant after purchasing the property in June.

“It’s been so unsettling,” Maughan said. 

Maughan said she joined several residents on a tour of the Bull Hide Creek plant last week with city officials after the residents inquired about the project. She said the residents shared their email addresses with utility officials then but were not informed about the agenda item until a Tribune-Herald article on Tuesday.

Maughan said the Bull Hide plant had an odor that she worried would become worse during the hot summer months. She also expressed concerns that the city was going against regulations laid out in ordinances protecting the Brazos River Corridor District.

“Why were they so concerned about protecting the river corridor just a few thousand feet downstream?” Maughan said. “It’s a corridor where you can’t have signs, you can’t build certain buildings of a certain height, you can’t park your RV too close to it. I mean, there’s all kinds of tiny little ordinances, but you can put a wastewater treatment plant just a few feet upstream of it.”

Craig Pollard, a geologist who lives near the planned facility, said in an interview that his main concern with the plant is the fact that it would be located in a flood plain. If flooding were to occur, Pollard said the raw sewage from the plant would flow downstream to Waco and devastate the river.

Pollard also said he felt it was “bizarre” to construct a treatment plant for China Spring and Bosqueville across the river from those communities, as it necessitates the construction of an underground pipe.

“If there is any kind of breach in that system, whether the facility gets swamped or the pipe gets in some kind of disrepair, that directly affects the Brazos River,” Pollard said.

He said the plant would provide no benefit to Chalk Bluff residents, who rely on septic systems.

In the work session, Tyer said new technology could become available that would allow the new plant to operate much differently from the Bull Hide plant. Tyer said the city has already invested $2 million in odor control technology at the city’s new transfer lift station off University Parks Drive.

Tyer said only a small fraction of the 150 acres would be needed for the facility, which would be located outside the flood plain. Trees would be planted around the facility as a buffer to reduce light and noise pollution to nearby residents.

In response to concerns about a possible rupture of pipes under the Brazos, Tyer also said the city already has many pipes running beneath the river.

Council Member Jim Holmes, who represents China Spring, said he welcomes the discussion with Chalk Bluff residents about their concerns and said the discourse is important to the public process. He said more meetings with the residents are planned in coming weeks, and the city will take great care to prevent pollution.

Mayor Dillon Meek said he is also looking forward to further conversations with the residents. While he said he doesn’t love the idea of building a new facility, he said it is needed to get ahead of growth in the area.

“The good news I believe is that we have a track record of having water treatment facilities that do not cause a problem to neighbors, as evidenced by the neighbors of the Bull Hide, that produce no odor, that produces clean water being put back into the system,” Meek said. “We can point to that and say that we do take this seriously. And we have a track record of doing it. 

“We will again ensure that we work with the residents to strike this balance.”