BILL ANALYSIS

H.B. 3871

By: Smith

Natural Resources

Committee Report (Unamended)

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE

Interested parties report that the Gulf Coast Waste Disposal Authority was originally created to serve the counties of Chambers, Galveston, and Harris and to enhance and protect the waters of Galveston Bay by providing waste disposal systems and regulating waste disposal. The parties observe that since its inception, the authority has treated both municipal and complex industrial wastewater and was later authorized to provide wastewater treatment for the City of Odessa and the local industries in that community. The parties report that as a result of the prolonged drought in Texas, the authority has received several requests from its commercial and industrial customers to provide treatment of water that falls outside of wastewater treatment industrial settings, such as the treatment of brackish, reuse, nonpotable surface, or saline water.  Such parties note that the authority is not allowed to treat these types of water under current law.  

H.B. 3871 seeks to facilitate the Gulf Coast Waste Disposal Authority in meeting the needs of its commercial and industrial customers by enabling the authority to treat water other than wastewater.

RULEMAKING AUTHORITY

It is the committee's opinion that this bill does not expressly grant any additional rulemaking authority to a state officer, department, agency, or institution.

ANALYSIS

H.B. 3871 amends Chapter 409, Acts of the 61st Legislature, Regular Session, 1969, to empower the Gulf Coast Waste Disposal Authority, subject only to the authority vested by general law in the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, to provide water systems. The bill authorizes the authority to have the same powers with regard to the acquisition, construction, and operation of a water system that it has with regard to disposal systems.  The bill authorizes the authority to exercise the same rights, powers, and authority with respect to the control, storage, preservation, transmission, treatment, and disposition of water and water systems that it may exercise under its general contracting authority with regard to waste, waste disposal systems, and treatment facilities.

H.B. 3871 defines "water system" as a system of pipelines, conduits, canals, pumping stations, force mains, plants, storage, or other facilities used for the treatment, collection, or distribution of water.

EFFECTIVE DATE

On passage, or, if the bill does not receive the necessary vote, September 1, 2013.