City agreed to pay $563,000 civil penalty and implement sewer system improvements exceeding $65 million, including comprehensive system assessment and repair or replacement of defective pipe segments and manholes within 10 years, resolving frequent raw sewage discharges to local waterways.

City of Tyler, Texas — Sanitary Sewer Overflow Consent Decree (2017)

Outcome: City of Tyler agreed to pay a $563,000 civil penalty split equally between the United States and Texas, and implement sewer system improvements exceeding $65 million over 10 years, including comprehensive system assessment and repair or replacement of defective pipe segments and manholes, resolving documented frequent discharges of raw sewage to local waterways through sanitary sewer overflows.

The City of Tyler, Texas, the county seat of Smith County and the commercial center of East Texas with a population of approximately 100,000, operated a wastewater collection system that frequently discharged raw sewage to waters of the United States through sanitary sewer overflows, in violation of Clean Water Act Section 301(a). Violations documented by EPA and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality included both operational failures and inadequate operation and maintenance practices contributing to the chronic overflow pattern.

The settlement, announced January 17, 2017, was jointly enforced by EPA and TCEQ. It required Tyler to pay the $563,000 civil penalty split equally between the federal government and the State of Texas, and to implement a comprehensive compliance program including: system-wide assessment of the sewer collection infrastructure, repair or replacement of defective pipe segments and manholes identified during the assessment within a 10-year deadline, and development of capacity management, operations, and maintenance (CMOM) programs to prevent future SSO events. Total estimated compliance cost exceeded $65 million.

Tyler is located in the Sabine River watershed in East Texas, where water quality in regional waterways is affected by municipal and industrial discharges from multiple East Texas communities. The consent decree reflects EPA Region 6's continuing enforcement focus on Texas municipalities with chronic SSO violations, particularly in regions where population growth in the 2000s and 2010s added significant flows to collection systems that were not designed to accommodate current population levels.

Primary Source: City of Tyler, Texas Clean Water Act Settlement | US EPA