Time for the Groundwater District to Step Up on LCRA Contamination

To the editor:

For years, the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) have treated Fayette County as an industrial dumping ground. Right now, they are attempting to quietly rubberstamp a $146 million “Closurein- Place” plan for the unlined coal ash ponds at the Fayette Power Project (FPP).

If they succeed, it guarantees that heavy metals, arsenic, and selenium will be left to leach directly into the Gulf Coast Major Aquifer and our local surface waters.

In April, I formally docketed a patented, permanent remediation solution (“Option C”) with the TCEQ. This advancedmanufacturing alternative would completely eradicate the contamination, clean our water, and remove the financial liability. Instead of evaluating it, the TCEQ is actively burying the solution to protect the utility’s $146 million band-aid.

Federal complaints have already been filed with the EPA Office of Inspector General and the Texas Sunset Advisory Commission regarding this regulatory cover-up. But we do not have to wait for federal investigators or Austin bureaucrats to save us. We have local power, and it is time we force our elected officials to use it.

The Fayette County Groundwater Conservation District (FCGCD) was created for one reason: to protect our water. Under Chapter 36 of the Texas Water Code, this District board has the absolute statutory authority to enter the FPP facility, bypass the TCEQ’s mathematically manipulated data, and independently test the monitoring wells themselves. If they find degradation, they have the power to halt it.

But bureaucrats do not swing that hammer unless the citizens make them.

The District attempts to silence public opposition by limiting comments to just three minutes per person. Three minutes is not enough time to present the federal evidence, the engineering data, and the legal statutes they are currently ignoring.

I am asking every concerned citizen, landowner, and neighbor to attend the next FCGCD board meeting on Monday, June 8 at 9:30 a.m. (255 Svoboda Ln, Rm 115, La Grange). When your name is called for public comment, I am asking you to stand up, approach the microphone, and formally yield your three minutes of speaking time to me. If enough of us stand together and pool our time, I will have the continuous floor to present the federal dossier, put the board on notice on the public record, and legally demand they dispatch testing agents to the LCRA site immediately.

They expect a fragmented, three-minute complaint they can brush off. Let’s give them a unified legal demand they cannot walk away from. We need your time to protect our water.