SAN ANTONIO – The head of San Antonio Water System (SAWS) told KSAT that systems are in place to protect the city’s water supply after the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) gave the green light for Guajolote Ranch, a controversial development in northwest Bexar County.
The project permit was approved during a meeting Wednesday morning. The TCEQ’s Office of the Commissioners concluded that the permit for the development’s wastewater treatment plant “meets all applicable requirements.”
Guajolote Ranch is a proposed development that would create approximately 3,000 homes on 1,100 acres, located north of Grey Forest. Lennar Homes, a Florida-based developer, is the company behind the project.
KSAT has covered neighbors’ concerns about the project for nearly two years.
Neighbors oppose the proposed housing development because of the wastewater treatment plant that could come with it, which would treat sewage from homes in Guajolote Ranch and discharge it over an area that feeds into Trinity and Edwards aquifers. Those two aquifers supply San Antonio with water.
SAWS President and CEO Robert Puente told KSAT that the utility is comfortable with the project after Lennar Homes agreed to several terms.
Puente said they believe they have “minimized any contamination to the aquifer.”
“The sewage that comes into the plant has to have increased filtration before it exits the plant,” Puente said. “And the other one was nutrient removal — the nutrients that are in the sewage, a heightened way to remove those nutrients.”
He said treated water must also be used on-site as much as possible.
When asked if there’s anything coming out of treated sewage water that he would consider harmful to a water supply, Puente said “not in this circumstance.”
“Because of what I mentioned earlier, the enhanced treatment and the enhanced filtration that we have contractually obligated them to,” Puente said.
Puente said hundreds of laboratory tests are conducted every month to ensure the water delivered is “of the highest quality possible.”
Puente said the development, “in our opinion, will not cause our community to have a lower quality water.”
“We’re not agreeing with it moving forward, and we’re not supporting it,” Puente said. “What we feel that SAWS has done through these nine concessions, we have protected the aquifer. … We have minimized any kind of contamination to the aquifer.”
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