Below is a brief summary of the TCEQ Water Permit Hearings held in Austin last month November 16th-19th. The Environmental Defense Fund, comprised of several parties, represented our community and our concerns regarding the safety of our drinking water in regards to the contested water discharge permit.
It was revealed at the hearings that the permit does not require the TCEQ to do any testing of the waters approved for mine wastewater discharge. The permit only requires the mine itself to test once every 5 years, (5 year permit) which was conducted after its first discharge in June. The mines position is that it will deposit little water discharge into the creeks unless the community receives rains. The permit does not account for annual inundations from June - October, and should consider the actual amount of waters received by the community each year. The amount of water to be deposited into the Elm Creek, Rio Grande River and other tributaries will exceed the orginal amounts submitted the TCEQ for the origninal permitting process and should require more testing. This mine water is being deposited directly into our municipal water supply and is wholly inadequate for protecting and safeguarding our community from water contamination.
The EDF Group’s position is that this TPDES permit should be denied to Dos Republicas because, among other concerns, insufficient data was supplied in the application, there is more aquatic life in the receiving streams than originally thought and monitoring requirements for discharged contaminants are insufficient.