Of those, 75 flow in the Brazos River Basin, which has more impaired streams than any other river basin in Texas. Throughout Texas, more than 460 stream segments are classified by TCEQ as “impaired,” meaning they fall short of water quality standards because of pollution. Environmental Protection Agency to force Texas to fix its “broken” water system and accused the state agency of giving developers and other polluters a “green light to a huge contamination” of Texas’ public waterways. A staff report by the Texas Sunset Advisory Commission this year called TCEQ commissioners “reluctant regulators.” In 2021, more than 20 environmental groups filed petitions asking the U.S. It’s also adding to pollution as cities, farms, ranches, and industrial complexes return the Brazos’ water-sometimes clean, often polluted-to the river, once they’ve used it for drinking, cooking, cleaning, raising livestock, watering crops, light-commercial to heavy-industrial processes, recreation, and watering hundreds of thousands of lawns.Īnd, as the federal Clean Water Act turns 50, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) is again taking fire from various directions for not better protecting the state’s water resources. Urban, suburban, and industrial growth is creating ever-increasing demands on the Brazos’ finite supply of water. That’s the Gordian knot of development in the Brazos basin. In the meantime, a much tougher fight faces the Brazos-and not just on the scenic section. However, the rules that created the riverway are set to expire in 2025 unless activists can convince the Legislature to renew them. Credit: Meridith Kohut for The Texas Observer In 2005, the Texas Legislature gave special protections from mining to this segment of the Brazos River, that runs from below Possum Kingdom Lake to above Lake Granbury. A man fly fishing with his dog in the Brazos River. Thousands of people a year kayak, canoe, fish, and swim in one of the state’s most picturesque stretches of river, framed by high rocky bluffs. Many quarries shut down as a result of the new restrictions, but tourism has flourished. The criteria also required a reclamation plan and the use of best-available technology. It banned new quarries or expansions located within 200 feet and those between 200 and 1,500 feet of the river unless they could meet specific criteria set to control erosion and protect wildlife habitats. The legislation tightened rules so that any quarry operating within a mile of the river must obtain a special permit. In 2005, the Texas Legislature created the John Graves Scenic Riverway on the segment of the Brazos from below Possum Kingdom Lake to just above Lake Granbury and gave it stronger protections from rock mining. The book-still in print since its publication in 1960-sparked a conservation movement and helped lead to the abandonment of plans for all but one of the downstream dams. Graves wrote of the beauty of the free-flowing river the stories of the Comanches and Anglo settlers who had lived on its banks and even mentioned the encroachment of industry in the form of a gravel pit. He wanted to memorialize the river he had hunted, fished, and paddled before it could be changed forever by a string of dams that had been proposed, from Possum Kingdom to Whitney. Read Part 1 of Drifting Toward Disaster: The (Second) Rio Grandeįort Worth native and author John Graves wrote Goodbye to a River about a three-week canoe trip he had made on the Brazos in fall 1957. Perhaps most importantly for the Brazos’ own survival, it inspired an enduring book. The river has inspired poetry, art, and music. When it won its independence and became a short-lived republic, Texas established its capital at Washington-on-the-Brazos. Texas’ first capital, when it was a colony authorized by the Spanish government, was founded on the Brazos at San Felipe de Austin. Spanish explorers named it Los Brazos de Dios, “the Arms of God,” because of the river’s many tributaries and life-saving waters. It drains the second-largest river basin in Texas, meandering for 840 miles from the Llano Estacado near Lubbock, cutting across prairie and limestone hills to woodlands, through farms and ranches, cities, towns, and coastal marshes before finally merging with the Gulf of Mexico south of Freeport’s giant petrochemical plants. įew rivers can claim as strong a connection to Texas’ natural and cultural history-and its very identity-as the Brazos. ” Sign up for the TXO weekly newsletter, or follow them on Facebook, Twitter or Mastodon. This is Part 2 of Drifting Toward Disaster, a Texas Observer series about life-changing challenges facing Texans and their rivers.
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