The Brownsville City Commission has consented to the issuance of $13 million in water contract supply bonds for the installation of an arsenic removal system and expansion of the Southmost Regional Water Authority desalination plant.

The request was approved after its second reading during the commission meeting on Oct. 20.

Joseph W. Norris, principal engineer for NRS Consulting Engineers, gave a presentation regarding the implementation of the system and answered the commission’s questions.

Norris said NRS was hired to design and build the desalination plant in 2002. The $23 million plant was inaugurated April 1, 2004.

According to the U.S. Environmental Agency Web site, arsenic is a semi-metal element. It is odorless and tasteless.

Arsenic in water can cause both short- and long-term effects.

"Long-term exposure to arsenic has been linked to cancer of the bladder, lungs, skin, kidneys and nasal passages, liver and prostate. Short-term exposure to high doses of arsenic can cause other adverse health effects, but such effects are unlikely to occur from U.S. public water supplies that are in compliance with the arsenic standard," the Web site stated.

John S. Bruciak, CEO and general manager of the Brownsville Public Utilities Board, said the deadline to begin the installment of the arsenic system removal is Nov. 14.

According to the EPA, on Jan. 22, 2001, the federal agency adopted a new standard for arsenic in drinking water at 10 parts per billion (ppb), replacing the old standard of 50 ppb.  The rule became effective on Feb. 22, 2002.  The date by which systems must comply with the new 10 ppb standard was Jan. 23, 2006.

"When they say final rule, it’s not necessarily final rule; the effective date of the final rule was February 2002," Norris said. "It really wasn’t until the construction [of the regional desalination plant] started that we were sure that the 10 [parts per billion] would be the final rule."

Other systems have been used to clean the water.

"The plant--the largest such facility in the state of Texas--uses reverse osmosis to transform groundwater that was once considered unusable into bottle-quality water," according to a May 2004 newsletter from NRS.

District 2 Commissioner Charlie Atkinson did not agree on spending more money on the plant. Atkinson told Norris that former city commission members approved the building of the desalination plant knowing that technology was available but not incorporating it.

"We are paying for something that could have been avoided if we would’ve got somebody that would have built [the desalination plant] the right way, who had the technology back then to fix it," Atkinson said.

Norris disagreed, explaining that at the time there were few proven arsenic removal systems installed in other plants.

He said NRS looked at the El Paso desalination plant’s arsenic removal system and estimated Brownsville would spend $10 million on its own plant.

"If you did the project today as opposed to back then, you would’ve carried $6.3 million worth of interest, you had a differential cost of $4.5 million and, so basically, you would cost the city almost over $10 million more than you are doing today," Norris said.

Commissioner At-Large "A" Anthony P. Troiani said the plant is producing fewer gallons of water per day than originally expected.

"We are producing 6.2 million gallons per day but if we had put the arsenic removal system in, if we would’ve had $10 million, you could have gotten 7.5 [million gallons per day]," Norris said.

The regional desalination plant is operated by the Southmost Regional Water Authority and partners with PUB, Valley Municipal Utility District No. 2 (Rancho Viejo), the City of Los Fresnos, the Town of Indian Lake and the Brownsville Navigation District.

On Oct. 15, PUB was awarded a $46 million grant from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 through the Clean Water State Revolving Fund-Disadvantaged Community Program administered by the Texas Water Development Board. The funds will be used to "fund wastewater system improvements," according to a PUB news release.

Bruciak states in the news release that the grant "will allow BPUB to address infiltration and inflow issues with the city’s aged sanitary sewer collection systems."

The news release also states that the proposed projects consist of 15 separate construction contracts throughout the older sections of Brownsville, with 31 miles of 6-inch to 30-inch-diameter sanitary sewer pipeline and 38 lift stations scheduled for improvement.

The deadline to begin construction on the projects is Feb. 17, 2010, and completion is expected in 2013.