Houston was founded in 1836, but development was slow moving. Twenty-five years later, “Houston still had only two fire engines, no paid fireman, no paved streets, no covered sewers, no street lighting and no permanent health board,” according to a report on the Houston Public Works website. The municipal water works moved at a faster pace piping in large quantities to households, but while a sewage plan was developed in the 1860s, it stalled out in the approval process, continuing to leave waste disposal to cesspools, privies and dumping into streets and bayous.
Buffalo Bayou, the main river flowing through Houston, was used for multiple needs—commercial boat traffic, drinking water and waste runoff collection. Not a great mix, especially for a slow-moving stream. And residents became increasingly concerned about the quality of water coming out of their taps. A Houston Daily Post article in 1983 explained that “40,000 gallons of sewage from the Houston and Texas Central Railroad shops gushed daily into Buffalo Bayou above the Water Works dam, thus contaminating the bayou and Houston’s drinking water as well.”
In 1900, Alexander Potter, a consulting engineer, proposed a sewer system to serve the nearly 45,000 residents, and the Willow Street Pumping Station was born. In “Houston, a History,” David G. McComb describes the station, “The sewer system, utilizing advanced concepts then applied only in a few other places in the world, consisted of a series of pipes, varying 18 to 42. … At the opening inspections of the system, which finally cost $280,000, Potter bragged about the purity of the effluent.”
However, a year after the completion of the system, due to continued use of alternate disposal methods, the presence of animals in the bayous and a lack of maintenance on the system, the bacteria levels were 161,106 bacteria per cubic centimeters above the safe levels.
In 1917, Houston started to chart a new path. To comply with a recently passed state law prohibiting the dumping of untreated sewage into fresh water sources, Houston added two activated sludge treatment facilities, some of the first within the U.S. This replaced the traditional style filter beds, and the two plants combined treated more than 10 million gallons per day. These two facilities and the growing lines and stations made a marked difference, but the Buffalo Bayou’s pollution problem continued to plague the growing population.
In 1946, Houston updated its sludge disposal system to a process that would dry the sludge and generate a fertilizer (named Hou-Actinite). The systems continued to grow, now using a dry system of sludge disposal. In a piece on the wastewater history of Houston, Susan Smyer wrote, “By 1968, either due to construction or annexation, the city was operating 3,085 miles of sanitary sewers, 65 treatment plants and 168 lift pump stations for a population (which had doubled since 1950) of 1,160,000.”
When the Clean Water Act passed in 1972, Houston began to invest even more in wastewater treatment, adding the 69th Street Wastewater Treatment Plant—the largest project built by the Public Works and Engineering Department at the time.
Keeping the bayou clean is an ongoing process, one the city and organizations like the Buffalo Bayou Partnership and its Clean & Green program work to solve—even in the face of spills like the April 2024 incident that released more than 100,000 gallons of wastewater into Buffalo Bayou.
According to Houston Public Works, the wastewater system now serves over 2 million people, 40 wastewater treatment plants and a collection system with more than 380 lift stations and 6,100 miles of pipelines. The department is also required to spend approximately $9 billion on improvements to the wastewater system by 2036 to follow an ongoing consent decree. The $1 billion already spent on these efforts is estimated to have prevented more than 600 overflows across Houston.
As W.E. White, the city of Houston chief engineer in the 1960s, said, “Why are wastewater treatment plants important? They protect public health. They protect water quality. What could be more important?”
References
- houstonpublicworks.org/sites/g/files/nwywnm456/files/doc/003_history_waste_water_operations.pdf
- houstonpress.com/news/houstons-surviving-landmarks-6744825?storyPage=3
- uhd.edu/news/2024/09-september/week-of-september-9/houstons-smelly-early-history-and-the-willow-street-pump-station.aspx
- houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/environment/article/wastewater-spill-rain-69th-street-east-houston-19599352.php
- houstonpublicworks.org/pretreatment-and-industrial-wastewater-service
- smartwatermagazine.com/news/smart-water-magazine/houston-seeks-15-billion-water-infrastructure-overhaul
