The Buda City Council has reinstated the city’s public works director, who had been on administrative leave since his arrest last week for allegedly dumping raw sewage on the ground. Everett Conner was charged with a misdemeanor offense stemming from a May 2001 pollution violation. Despite the city’s catastrophic wastewater mess resulting from what is believed to have been a series of pollution violations, the council decided on Tuesday to return Conner to his other public works duties — overseeing road projects and the public water system. Conner has not operated the wastewater facility since last year’s pollution incident. The city will conduct an in-house probe to determine if other city higher-ups were aware of the violations, or, at the very least, knew that Conner was not properly licensed to operate a wastewater treatment plant.
The charge brought against Conner by state investigators has re-ignited a controversy that the city believed had been resolved a year ago, when the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission began its investigation. At the time, Buda paid more than $56,000 in civil penalties and another $185,000 to clean up a private lake contaminated by the sludge. The city also contracted with the Guadalupe-Brazos River Authority to operate the plant, which has since doubled its sewage capacity. Still, Council Member Byron Warren acknowledges that the pollution violations and subsequent charge against Conner may be the city’s cross to bear for a long time. “If you shoot a fellow and nine months later you’re caught, well, you still shot that fellow,” he said.
By outward appearances, Conner, who was hired in September 2000, seemed to have been doing a good job — until the sludge hit the fan last May. Raw muck had oozed into a wet-weather creek and entered tributaries of the San Marcos River. The worst damage, however, hit one Buda family especially hard. The sewage eventually found its way into a private, 12-acre lake about a mile and a half east of I-35, loading it with nutrients and choking off the oxygen in the water. Meanwhile, the pollution killed the lake’s vegetation and hundreds of 5- and 6-pound bass, crappie, and perch — all “beautiful fish” and the pride of Susan Bollinger Meckel and her parents, Lyle and Mary Bollinger, who purchased the property and lake in 1978. “This was their retirement dream,” said daughter Susan. “They bought this property because of the lake.”
Bollinger Meckel said a dredging company is in the final cleanup stages. “We’re hoping we can return the lake to a healthy environment,” she said. But her family doesn’t overlook one factor that may have contributed to the overload of sewage at the wastewater facility. “There was a lot of growth and development going on at that time. It’s a little disconcerting to think that growth and development was allowed to continue” without the capacity to handle the additional waste. “No private citizen should have to deal with what we’ve been through. We’re all exhausted.”
This article appears in February 1 • 2002.
