Diane Causey is a 75-year-old antique shop manager in Utopia, a tiny town of 277 people located an hour-and-a-half northwest of San Antonio. Her favorite place in town is a swimming hole on the Sabinal River, accessed on land her family owns. This section of the Sabinal, a little-known Texas river fed by springs, is crystal-clear and chilly even in June. Each summer, Causey’s extended family of more than 100 people converge on the swimming hole for their annual family reunion; kids jump into the water from Cypress-lined banks and cannonball from a rope swing suspended above the river. They hold talent shows and worship services and music jams—Causey herself plays the keyboard but also dabbles in hammer dulcimer and banjo. “It’s always fun. It’s a beautiful place,” she says.
That’s why she was concerned when she learned this year that a property just upstream from her family campground had asked state regulators for permission to dump wastewater into the Sabinal. The plan was proposed by Young Life, a youth-oriented Christian organization that operated a ritzy summer camp for up to 500 people on the banks of the river. Now the camp sought its first discharge permit, which would have allowed it to eject up to 65,000 gallons of treated wastewater into the Sabinal each day. That didn’t sit well with Causey, whose land would be among the first sites to encounter the wastewater on its journey downstream. Causey and others sent upwards of 500 comments and letters to TCEQ to protest the plan. Young Life eventually dropped the discharge plan and agreed to treat its wastewater onsite and reuse it.
“That wasn’t what we wanted to happen to our little river,” Causey says. “Just to dump anything into the river … doesn’t seem like being good stewards of the land.”
