Environment & Pollution
How's the water?
A question like that is pretty hard to answer for a city as large and spread out as Houston. The short answer though, is “not so bad,” according to the 2005 Basin Highlight report released by the Houston-Galveston Area Council. The report states that while water quality around the Houston area continues to improve as a whole, certain water bodies still need some attention.
“It depends upon where you want to talk about," said Todd Running of the H-GAC. "Specific water bodies have no problems, and then others have lots of them. But overall, I think water quality has improved as a whole."
According to the report, the average citizen really only wants to know about water quality when it comes to four situations:
1. When you get a drink from your faucet.
2. When you go swimming.
3. When you are about to eat a fish you just caught.
4. When you get a whiff of a terrible smell from some nearby water.
As far as drinking water goes, Houston meets or exceeds all Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and EPA requirements. The system is even rated as a “Superior” water supply system by the state of Texas.
Seventy percent of the drinking water is surface water from the San Jacinto River, through Lakes Conroe and Houston, and the Trinity River through Lake Livingston.
The remaining 30 percent comes from wells at 93 separate groundwater plants. According to the 2004 City of Houston water quality report, the very deep wells pull water from the Evangeline and Chicot aquifers, and are not vulnerable to surface contamination.
Taking water from the ground has disadvantages though; the most common in Houston being subsidence.
“Subsidence is a huge problem in Harris county and some of the surrounding areas," said Running. "When you remove that groundwater, the water that filled the pores of that clay or sand is no longer there, so you get settling. So you get areas in Northwest Harris county that have literally dropped feet. The goal is to have only 20 percent of the water that's used in this area come from groundwater sources.”
While swimming is not be recommended for many of the bayous around town, due to factors including depth and high bacteria levels, swimming is enjoyed all over Lake Houston according to Russell Grimes of Houston Public Works Lake Patrol.
Grimes says the “no swimming” signs at certain parts of the lake are more for liability reasons than pollution, because the city does not have designated swimming areas on the lake.
“People anchor their boats and swim all over the place," said Grimes. "We even swim in it."
Lake Houston, a popular spot for catching catfish and crappie, even hosts weekly fishing tournaments in the summer.
The city's wastewater system has received thirty four gold and silver awards from the Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies, and has a TCEQ and EPA discharge compliance rate of 99 percent.
Houston has come a long way in terms of wastewater treatment in the past twenty years. In 1987, the city was fined $500,000 by the Texas Water Commission for previous violations in the wastewater systems. Many wastewater treatment plants in the late 70s and early 80s were owned by private individuals or development companies, and due to rapid city growth, many systems were relied upon to serve a population for a longer period of time than originally intended.
“You had these plants that were designed to operate for just a few years, running for a very long period of time," said Running."And smaller treatment plants are much more vulnerable to upset, whether it be from rainfall events or whatever else."
What that means is, if you've got a small treatment plant, designed to take in a certain amount of wastewater; it could run fine on a normal day. But if you introduce large amounts of rainwater into the system, that water causes overflow at the treatment plant. That overflow used to be released directly into the water system, a technique known as blending.
According to a 1984 Houston City Council study, more than 200 small sewerage treatment plants in the Lake Houston watershed released fifty million gallons daily into the lake, some inadequately treated.
Mary Ellen Whitworth, of the Bayou Preservation Association, says the wastewater was not put directly into the lake; that it made its way there from the bayous to the north.
“They were discharging raw sewage into the bayous, not directly into Lake Houston," said Whitworth. "As far as I know, the city does not have any wastewater treatment plants that discharge into Lake Houston."
The EPA no longer allows blending, and the current sewerage system has the ability to hold large amounts of storm water for later treatment.
The city spent more than $1 billion to expand and repair the sewerage system since the 80s under the Clean Water Act and things have been on the up ever since.
While bacteria levels continue to be a problem in certain bayou systems, the sources of the bacteria are believed to be mostly from non-point sources; meaning bacteria from animal waste, street runoff and chemicals in the grass, such as fertilizers that drain into the water systems when it rains.
Whitworth’s group and others like it work every day to monitor water quality levels in the Houston area.
“Nobody has solved the puzzle yet, so nobody knows where it's coming from," said Whitworth."We know that storm water is loaded with bacteria, but we don't know why?"
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