Hallett Breach Sends Hundreds of Millions of Gallons of Wastewater Downstream
Correction: This sand pit in this post was sold by Hallett to Riverwalk Porter LLC on January 23, 2024.
Google Earth shows a massive breach in the southernmost pond of the Hallett San Jacinto West Fork mine in a satellite image dated February 19, 2024.
Here’s how the same area looked today from a drone.
And here’s how it looked from a boat just hours earlier.
A Harris County Flood Control Gage at Highway 99, slightly upstream from this location, showed the river level was up approximately 9 feet when I took the drone photo above this afternoon.
That puts the river-level photo, taken by a resident who prefers to remain anonymous, in a whole new light. The amount of water that escaped from the pond went from near the top of the bank (which you can see) to approximately another 9 feet lower (which you can’t see in these photos).
Breach Open for More than Two Months
Photographing this area is difficult. It is impossible to reach by public roads. And it’s at the edge of my drone’s range.
However, I do have photos that show it happened sometime between January 28 and February 5, 2024.
One drone photo shows the dike intact on January 28. A second, on February 5, shows the breach.
Color of Pond Changes After Breach
The color of the pond is dramatically different in the two photos. Before the January 28 photo and the January floods, the pond was an ghostly off-white color. By February 5, it returned to a more natural brown color.
How Much Wastewater Entered the River?
Google Earth shows the pond measures approximately 182 acres. The difference between the vegetation line around the pond and today’s water level appears to be about 6 feet. But as we saw above, the river was up about 9 feet nearby. If you add another 9 feet to the 6-foot estimate, it’s conceivable that the pond level dropped as much as 15 feet after the breach when floodwaters receded.
But let’s say, to be conservative, that it only dropped 10 feet. That would mean that 1,820 acre feet of wastewater entered the San Jacinto West Fork and made its way downstream to the source of drinking water for two million people – Lake Houston. That equals 593 million gallons – more than half a billion!
Back in 2019, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality cited the LMI Moorhead mine (upstream from Hallett) for the unauthorized discharge of 56 million gallons of white goop into the San Jacinto West Fork. It literally turned the West Fork white.
If my estimates for the Hallett breach are correct, it exceeds the LMI breech by 10X.
Estimating Escaped Sediment More Difficult
I documented at least three other leaks from other Hallett ponds during the January flood. No telling how much sediment escaped from this pond and the others.
I also documented huge amounts of sand suddenly appearing downstream.
A side-scanning sonar survey shows that the West Fork is now only 1-2 feet deep near River Grove Park. The Army Corps dredged that area in December 2018 and Kayden Industries dredged it again in 2020.
And let’s not forget the new City of Houston dredging program. It will remove another 800,000 cubic yards of accumulated sediment between Kings Point and FM1960.
To be fair, some of that sediment could have originated from river-bank erosion, other mines, upstream developments under construction, and even smaller tributaries.
Perhaps Hallett would like to chip in what they feel is their fair share for dredging. Then again, maybe they wouldn’t. Only time and the courts will tell.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 4/10/2024
2416 Days since Hurricane Harvey
The thoughts expressed in this post represent opinions on matters of public concern and safety. They are protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution and the Anti-SLAPP Statute of the Great State of Texas.
