Sludge Fight Shifts To Bastrop County

By ANDY BEHLEN  Organizers behind the effort to stop the now-withdrawn plans for a sewage sludge application site near the Colorado River in Fayette County went ahead with a meeting in Fayetteville on Wednesday, June 22. 

A few residents of Bastrop County spoke at the meeting about another sludge site proposed near Cedar Creek, which drains into the Colorado River a short distance downriver from the City of Bastrop.

According to records from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, Denali Water Solutions filed the application for the Bastrop County site on March 22. Denali is the same company that proposed and later withdrew its application to use sewage sludge as fertilizer on 1,665 acres of pasture along the Colorado River near Ellinger. The sludge would have came from the City of Austin’s Hornsby Bend Biosolids Plant.

“The more attention the river gets, these things might not happen,” said Stephanie Jurek, who hosted the meeting with Leigh Hajovsky, both of whom float and fish the river recreationally. 

Denali withdrew its application for the Ellinger site on June 17. In a statement released that day, the company said, “While the project we have proposed and the permit requirements we would meet pose no threat to the river or the environment, we also recognize that even unwarranted concerns can cause worry for those who have this historic connection to this waterway and cherish it with emotional ties.”