HOUSTON-The San Jacinto River's west fork runs for 35 miles below the Lake Conroe dam, providing alternate glimpses of tall pines and gravel mines, willow oaks and busy overpasses. The waterway is prone to flood, not to inspire.
But the sporadically beautiful river is getting a second look from state and local officials, who are making a new push to make it safe for swimming and wading again.
The Houston Chronicle reports the recently formed West Fork Watersheds Partnership is developing plans to reduce the river's load of bacteria at a time of rapid development in surrounding Montgomery and Harris counties.
The river is in "the sweet spot," exceeding state standards for bacteria, "but not so much that we can't do anything about it," said Justin Bower, senior environmental planner for the Houston-Galveston Area Council, a regional body that is involved in the cleanup effort.
The problems on the west fork are seen throughout the Houston region. Many waterways have bacteria counts high enough to qualify them as unsafe for anyone who fishes, swims, kayaks or skips stones.
It would be easier to improve water quality if the pollution came from an obvious source, like a ruptured pipe. But the river's bacteria load comes from the waste of birds, livestock, wildlife, pets and people, through septic systems and wastewater treatment.
When it rains, much of the rainwater hits parking lots and sidewalks before flowing down sewers and carrying the waste into the river.
"We will be asking stakeholders, 'What can we do?'" said Jessica Uramkin, project manager for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, one of the partners in the cleanup effort. "It's not a single source."
The Texas standard for these waters is 126 colonies of E. coli bacteria per 100 milliliters of water.
State regulators first identified elevated levels of bacteria along the west fork in 2002. Since then, TCEQ data has shown an upward trendline, with concentrations ranging from 10 colonies to 10,000 colonies per 100 milliliters of water.
The harmful levels of bacteria coincide with rapid growth in the west fork's watershed. Since 2000, Montgomery County's population has increased from fewer than 300,000 to roughly 520,000. That means more houses, pavement and pets.
Experts said that the west fork's bacteria woes aren't as bad as other more urbanized waterways, but the situation could worsen if nothing is done while Montgomery County's population continues to grow.
"People are moving out there," said Lisa Gonzalez, a water quality expert and vice president of the Houston Advanced Research Center, which is based in The Woodlands. "If we let it go, we can end up with problems like we see in other parts of the city"-in Sims, Buffalo and Brays bayous, for example.
The growth has led to other problems within the watershed of the San Jacinto. The river has a west and east fork that come together in northeast Harris County, from where it flows into Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. Sand- and gravel-mining operations have choked the west fork with sediment, which clouds the water and later settles in Lake Houston at the junction of the east and west forks, reducing capacity of a reservoir that fills the taps of millions of people.
Clarity also provides an important indicator of a waterway's health because underwater grasses need sunlight to grow. Light cannot penetrate water that is too cloudy, leading to the death of grasses that provide spawning habitat and a hiding place for fish.
Along Lake Creek, which flows into the west fork in south Conroe, algae blooms might be a bigger concern, with wastewater serving as fertilizer. After the microscopic plants die, oxygen levels can plunge, killing fish and fouling the water.
With other troubled Houston-area watersheds, H-GAC has recommended several ways to improve water quality, including the use of ponds, porous pavements and green roofs to corral rainwater and let it sink into the ground before it goes into storm drains. Communities also can plant native vegetation that requires little, if any, fertilizers or pesticides and collect paint and other household chemicals to ensure the proper storage and disposal.
The strategies can vary depending on land uses and pollution sources in a watershed. For example, the San Bernard River's watershed-the subject of a previous protection plan by H-GAC-begins in mostly rural land where there's cattle grazing and other agricultural activity in Austin County and cuts through suburban Fort Bend County.
H-GAC cannot mandate the fixes. But Bower, the environmental planner, said he is encouraged by some steps already being taken along the west fork of the San Jacinto.
Johnson Development Corp., for example, is building a master-planned community called Grand Central Park on some 2,000 acres near the west fork and just north of The Woodlands. While the project will bring houses and high-rises to land that was once a Boy Scouts camp, the developer plans to preserve up to 900 acres along the river as a natural buffer.
At the same time, the nonprofit Bayou Land Conservancy has placed conservation easements on more than 1,300 acres along the San Jacinto's west fork to prevent the land from being developed or used in ways that could harm the river.
Bower said it likely will take 10 to 15 years-while the area's population continues to grow-before the west fork's bacteria levels are within state limits.
"We don't see this as an insurmountable task," he said. "But the problem didn't occur in a year, and it isn't going away in a year."