LCRA Pulls Plan to Relax Power Plant Pollution Monitoring Requirements

The Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) has withdrawn its application to amend its wastewater permit for the Fayette Power Project near La Grange.

“LCRA has decided not to pursue amendments to the Fayette Power Project wastewater discharge permit,” said Tom Oney, LCRA executive vice president for Public and Regulatory Affairs, in a statement to the Record on Wednesday, Aug. 24. }

Earlier this year, LCRA asked the Texas Commission for Environmental Quality to relax its pollution monitoring requirements for runoff at the power plant. Specifically, LCRA wanted to remove sele- nium limits for runoff from the power plant’s coal pile.

In addition, LCRA wanted TCEQ to ease pollution limits during heavy rainfall events. Under the current permit, the plant is allowed to exceed limits during a “10-year, 24-hour rainfall event.” LCRA wants to change that language to “10-year, 24-hour rainfall event or longer durations (e.g. 30 day event) when cumulative precipitation exceeds a 10-year event.”

Runoff from the plant enters Cedar Creek and its various tributaries before eventually discharging into the Colorado River below La Grange.

Upon learning about the application in June, Fayette County Judge Joe Weber called for LCRA and TCEQ to hold a public hearing in La Grange about the proposed changes.

“If it’s safe and everything is legal, that’s fine, but someone needs to come down here and explain it to us,” Weber told the Record back in June. “We have this big power plant and all this coal ash. It’s like they’re saying, ‘Just trust us, everything is OK.’ I think they need to come down and talk about that – let us know they are serious about what goes into that river.”

Weber said LCRA informed him they were withdrawing the application last week.

“While the changes LCRA requested in its application to TCEQ protect human health and the environment and are fully authorized by TCEQ regulations, LCRA will evaluate other measures that provide operational flexibility while continuing to be good stewards of the environment,” Oney said. “We have spoken with county leaders and are committed to continued open dialogue regarding the measures LCRA may pursue in the future.”

The Record reported on the application and LCRA’s poor efforts to notify the public about it back in June. LCRA published a public notice about the application in the June 3 issue of the Record.

The notice said that the full application was available for viewing at City Hall in La Grange. When the Record went to view it, City Hall staff didn’t know anything about the application.

City staff later discovered that a person from LCRA came to City Hall about a week before and placed the documents on a table in the lobby without telling anyone. City staff said LCRA never told them about the public notice or that members of the public could view the documents.