SAN PATRICIO, Texas — An environmental watchdog group called the Aransas Project lodged a successful complaint with Texas environmental regulators to stop construction of the Steel Dynamics wastewater treatment facility.
The company is building a $1.9 billion steel plant in Sinton and has now stopped construction on that wastewater project.
3News spoke with both sides on this issues.
The construction of the Steel Dynamics plant in Sinton has hit a snag. That after the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality found the company had violated the Texas Water Code by beginning construction on its wastewater treatment facility before the company had the required permit to do that work.
"We filed a written complaint with TCEQ that was investigated and the company has been cited for constructing a wastewater plant without a permit,” Jim Blackburn with the AP said.
Company officials said it was a simple misunderstanding.
"Where the discrepancy is, is in the constructing of those pieces of equipment and the TCEQ is clear about those pieces of equipment that will be affected by the permit, shouldn’t be constructed until the permit is issued and where our mistake was really in the interpretation of what piece of equipment was there," Barry Schneider, Sr. V.P. of the Flat Roll Steel Group for Steel Dynamics said.
But Jim Blackburn with the Aransas Project has even more concerns about that wastewater treatment facility when it is finally up and running.
Blackburn is the founder of the Aransas Project; an environmental group that first sprang to action in 2011 after filing a lawsuit against the state over the deaths of 23 endangered whooping cranes.
Now, Blackburn said the birds are under threat again by this plant and what it’s supposedly going to discharge into a nearby creek.
”Chiltipin Creek is an absolutely gorgeous estuary; it is loaded with shrimp and it has a lot of blue crabs which is what the whooping cranes eat and we are extremely concerned about metals in the discharge from the steel mill," Blackburn said.
Blackburn added that the plant’s wastewater treatment facility will discharge heavy metals such as copper and lead into that creek. That body of water then leads to Copano Bay.
"These metals are dangerous and copper is highly toxic to marine life," Blackburn said.
Barry Schneider is the senior vice president of the flat roll steel group for Steel Dynamics. He said the company is going to follow federal and state regulations and would never put anything into the environment that would harm animals like the blue crab and the whooping crane.
"Our process is designed to clean it up, to make sure there’s nothing in that water that doesn’t belong there that wasn’t there to begin with," Schneider said. "And then making sure that as that is submitted back to either waste treatment plant in Sinton or to the ditch that it is monitored and it’s exactly what we say it’s going to be and we support that."
The next step in this entire process will take place on March 15. That’s when Steel Dynamics has to tell the TCEQ what action it has taken in regards to the early start to the construction of that wastewater treatment facility without a permit.
Barry Schneider says the company has stopped all construction on that treatment facility until it receives the required permit. The company sent that application to the TCEQ on October 8, 2019 and still hasn’t been given an answer one way or the other.
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