Could a wastewater plant forever alter this suburban Fort Worth community?

BURLESON

Though it lies only minutes from Interstate 35, Michelle Quant’s property off FM 1187 near Burleson seems a world away from the city and its crowds.

Down the hill from the plantation-style home, pecan and walnut trees surround a spring-fed pond that provides water for horses and cattle, as well as a home for catfish and bass. If you look, you can make out a nearby subdivision and some commercial buildings through the treeline, but those are about the only reminders of encroaching urban sprawl, at least for now.

In April 2025, Greg Coontz, a Burleson attorney, and his sister, Cathy Frederick, a Burleson Realtor, filed an application with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to allow a privately owned wastewater treatment facility to discharge treated wastewater into a normally dry creek bed that runs through Quant’s property into Village Creek, which in turn runs into Lake Arlington.

The wastewater system is meant to support a proposed mobile home community that’s slated to go on a vacant 65-acre lot directly across from Quant on the north side of FM 1187. According to TCEQ filings, the community is expected to grow from 10 mobile homes in 2027 to more than 1,100 by 2036. At its peak, the wastewater treatment facility would discharge up to 225,000 gallons per day of treated effluent into the creek that crosses Quant’s land, depositing water into her pond on its way to Village Creek.

Residents worry about health, environment

In late January, nearly a dozen nearby neighbors gathered around Quant’s dining room table and aired their concerns about what Coontz and Frederick are proposing to do. Neither Coontz nor Frederick responded to the Star-Telegram’s requests for comment, nor did the attorney they hired to oversee their TCEQ filing case.

For her part, Quant doesn’t want treated effluent flowing into the pond where her livestock drinks and her family and youngsters from her church fish.

When she reviewed Coontz and Frederick’s TCEQ filing, she was surprised to find that nowhere did it mention that her pond lay along the effluent path.

Other residents worry about the impact of the treated wastewater on the Village Creek watershed, where an environmental protection plan was put in place several years ago to reduce pollution. Some fear the two proposed holding ponds near the wastewater treatment facility could overflow during a heavy rain, worsening flooding in an already flood-prone area and potentially contaminating the groundwater.

Still others believe the treatment facility will create nuisance odors or affect air quality, or that treated effluent discharged into the dry creek that feeds into Village Creek will stagnate, attracting mosquitoes.

Connie Dunn, who attended the meeting at Quant’s house, said she’s worried about her daughter, Em, who has an autoimmune disease. Dunn wonders if particulates in the air from the wastewater treatment facility could make her daughter ill.

TCEQ’s manual for managing small domestic wastewater systems lists several common violations at wastewater treatment facilities. Among those is the failure to keep effluent discharge under the permitted level. Other common problems include equipment deterioration stemming from poor maintenance and erosion of wastewater holding ponds.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s website shows there are 123 sites in Burleson with water permits. Of those, only two are listed as having current violations. One of those sites with a violation is a water treatment facility at the Escondido Village Mobile Home Community on Bethesda Road, which is permitted to discharge up to 19,500 gallons per day of effluent into the Village Creek watershed, according to TCEQ records.

Based on a Google satellite image, there are approximately 50 to 60 residential units in Escondido Village. Over the past two years, the wastewater treatment system has never had a major EPA violation, but it has been out of compliance four times for effluent falling below the minimum oxygen concentration value and five times for effluent exceeding the maximum value for suspended solids. The site was also flagged for having late or missing compliance reports in 2024.

According to online records, TCEQ issued a violation notice to the owners of the Escondido Village site in February 2025 after someone reported raw sewage being discharged as result of a malfunction at the wastewater treatment facility. There was another report that same month of raw sewage discharge, but there was no record of how that case was ultimately handled.

Escondido Village management did not respond to a message requesting comment.

The TCEQ spokesperson did not comment when asked how often the agency will test or monitor the treated effluent entering Quant’s property, but the Escondido Village permit, which was last renewed in 2022, requires the owners to submit monitoring data monthly.

Joe Robledo, a spokesman at the EPA’s Dallas office, said in an email the agency doesn’t track how often violations occur at small- to mid-sized domestic wastewater treatment facilities.

“Failure at any wastewater treatment facility is not generally due to size as long as the system is designed, operated, and maintained properly,” Robledo said. “A more common potential issue for small systems is if operators keep accepting new connections as the population increases without redesigning the system to handle increased capacity.

Residents bemoan lack of communication

The people who met at Quant’s house want assurances about the wastewater treatment facility that could be coming to their neighborhood, and almost all said they were disappointed that only a handful of nearby property owners were formally notified about Coontz and Frederick’s TCEQ filing. Quant was one of them, and she’s the one who spread the word.

“If it wasn’t for Michelle, none of us would be sitting here today,” said Chad Brantley, who added that no one from the neighborhood had heard from Coontz or Frederick or the developer they partnered with to build the mobile home community.

Quant also pointed out that the public notice that was required as part of the TCEQ filing was posted at the Crowley Public Library, six miles east — and in an entirely different city — from the wastewater treatment site.

According to a TCEQ spokesperson, the agency’s chief clerk mails out notices to adjacent and downstream property owners when a wastewater permit application is filed.

But it is incumbent upon the applicant to identify those property owners as part of the permit application process. If other residents wish to receive notice, they must register with the TCEQ.

Responses from local and state agencies

A spokesperson with the Fort Worth Water Department said the proposed site for the wastewater treatment facility was at one time part of the city’s extraterritorial jurisdiction, but it was removed at the property owner’s request. Therefore, the property isn’t eligible for Fort Worth city utilities. Drinking water is supplied to the area by the Bethesda Water Supply Corporation, and surrounding homes have septic systems for wastewater.

Lake Arlington isn’t a municipal water source for Fort Worth, but it is a source of drinking water for Arlington.

When asked if the wastewater treatment plant’s effluent would pose a threat to Lake Arlington’s water quality, a spokesperson for the city of Arlington issued a statement that included the following:

“Arlington residents should know that wastewater treatment methods approved and monitored by the TCEQ prevent negative water quality impacts and protect our watershed.”

The statement also said the millions of gallons of raw water entering Arlington’s two water treatment plants each day is tested throughout the day, “with the number of tests typically exceeding 125,000 in a single 24-hour period.”

Representatives from the Trinity River Authority of Texas, which implemented the Village Creek watershed protection program, did not respond to a request for comment.

The TCEQ spokesperson said the agency is scheduling a public meeting for Coontz and Frederick’s application. A date has not been set, but a notice will be posted 30 days in advance of that meeting.

According to the TCEQ website, these meetings are opportunities for the public to provide feedback and ask the applicant questions. A representative from TCEQ is also present for questions. A decision on the fate of an application, however, is not determined at a public meeting.

As of mid-January, Coontz and Frederick’s application had received more than 400 comments on the TCEQ website. There were numerous duplicates, but the message was clear: people who live nearby don’t want the wastewater treatment facility.

The TCEQ spokesperson didn’t directly address most of the concerns raised by Quant and her neighbors, but she did say TCEQ’s executive director will provide a written response to the comments the agency received. After that, the spokesperson said, those who still oppose the wastewater treatment application will have 30 days to ask for a reconsideration or a contested case hearing.

The contested case hearing is similar to a civil trial, presided over by an administrative judge. TCEQ commissioners consider all requests for a contested case hearing, the agency’s website says, but they can deny those requests.

“Therefore,” the TCEQ website reads, “it is very important that requesters fully explain — in their written comments, hearing requests and other filings — the reasons why their hearing request should be granted.”

At this point, TCEQ has determined, at least preliminarily, that Coontz and Frederick’s application meets state and federal requirements. In December, the agency issued a draft permit. If the final permit is granted, it will remain in effect for five years before renewal is required.

For now, worried residents are anxiously awaiting the public meeting, and Quant is hanging her hopes on getting a contested case hearing on the books. If that happens, the future of this area could come down to how strong an argument the community makes.