Clean Water
Clean water is essential to public health, community safety, and the health of our bayous, creeks, wetlands, and bays. Bayou City Waterkeeper’s Clean Water work protects the waters of the greater Houston region from pollution and holds governments, agencies, and polluters accountable when they fail to meet clean water laws.
What is a sanitary sewer overflow?
A sanitary sewer overflow, often called an SSO, happens when untreated or partially treated sewage leaves a wastewater system before it reaches a treatment facility.
This can happen in several ways:
- Overflowing from manholes into streets or drainage systems
- Spilling into bayous, rivers, creeks, or bays
- Pooling in parks, yards, or other public spaces
- Backing up into people’s homes through toilets, tubs, or drains
Sewage overflows can be caused by many problems, including broken equipment, blockages, aging pipes, too much rain entering the system, poor maintenance, or not enough capacity in the system to handle the amount of wastewater moving through it.
No matter how an overflow happens, untreated sewage can dirty local water, harm public health, and potentially violate the Clean Water Act.
Why sewage overflows matter
Sewage overflows can carry bacteria, viruses, and other pollutants into places where people live, work, fish, play, and gather. They can affect neighborhood streets, homes, school grounds, parks, bayous, creeks, and coastal waters.
These overflows also make our region more vulnerable to illness and water pollution. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), the state agency responsible for enforcing many environmental laws, has classified many waterways in the Houston region as “impaired.” This means they do not meet water quality standards and need to be cleaned up. In many cases, elevated bacteria levels and other signs of pollution are connected to wastewater problems.
Sewage overflows do not affect every community equally. Across the Houston region, Black, brown, and low-income communities are often more likely to experience repeated infrastructure failures, flooding, industrial pollution, and related health risks. For BCWK, tracking sewage overflows is part of a larger fight for clean water, climate justice, and infrastructure systems that protect all communities.
Why BCWK tracks sewage overflows
Bayou City Waterkeeper monitors sewage overflows to help communities understand where these incidents are happening, how often they occur, and what waterways or neighborhoods may be affected.
This work helps BCWK:
- identify patterns in reported sewage overflows;
- support residents affected by sewage pollution;
- advocate for stronger public reporting and accountability;
- push agencies and local governments to enforce clean water laws;
- show how infrastructure failures affect public health, water quality, and environmental justice.
Tracking sewage overflows also helps make public data more useful. A spreadsheet of reported incidents can be hard to understand. The maps, summaries, community stories, and plain-language updates in the Justice in the Sewers hub can help residents see what is happening in their neighborhoods and how they can participate in solutions.
City of Houston sewage overflows
Houston owns and operates one of the largest sanitary sewer systems in the country. The system includes thousands of miles of sewer pipe, dozens of wastewater treatment plants, hundreds of lift stations, and other infrastructure that carries wastewater away from homes and businesses for treatment.
For years, Houston’s sewer system has released untreated sewage into local waterways, streets, parks, and neighborhoods. In 2018, Bayou City Waterkeeper reviewed years of public data submitted by the City of Houston to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. BCWK identified thousands of sewage overflows across the city’s wastewater system.
BCWK’s legal action helped lead to a federal enforcement case brought by the United States and the State of Texas. In 2021, a federal judge approved a consent decree with the City of Houston. A consent decree is a court-approved agreement that requires the city to take specific actions to fix its wastewater system and reduce sewage overflows.
The Houston wastewater consent decree requires the City to make major repairs and improvements to its sewer system over 15 years. This includes repairing and replacing sewer pipes, improving lift stations, assessing system capacity, upgrading wastewater treatment facilities, and addressing areas with repeated or high-volume overflows.
Houston consent decree update
The consent decree is an important legal tool, but the work is far from finished.
Five years into the agreement, sewage overflows are still happening across Houston. BCWK’s review of public data found that sanitary sewer overflows remained high in 2022 and 2023, with more than 1,200 reported incidents each year. In 2024, reported overflows reached their highest levels since the consent decree began, with 1,377 incidents and more than 1.6 million gallons of sewage released.
BCWK has also raised concerns about transparency and delays. In 2026, BCWK presented findings from an independent engineering review showing that some high-priority consent decree projects appeared delayed or incomplete, and that the City’s public reports did not provide enough clear information for residents to understand whether the City is meeting key requirements.
This matters because Houstonians are helping pay for these investments through higher water and sewer bills. Residents deserve to know whether the work is reducing sewage overflows, protecting public health, and improving conditions in the neighborhoods most affected by sewer failures.
BCWK continues to monitor the consent decree through legal advocacy, public data analysis, community partnerships, and the Monthly Poo Report. We are calling for clear public reporting, timely infrastructure repairs, stronger accountability, and solutions that address both public sewer infrastructure and the private sewer laterals that connect homes to the public system.
City of Baytown sewage overflows
Bayou City Waterkeeper’s clean water work also includes the City of Baytown, where sewage overflows have affected local waterways and nearby communities.
In 2022, BCWK served the City of Baytown with a notice of intent to sue under the Clean Water Act after reviewing public records related to the city’s wastewater system. BCWK identified more than 800 potential Clean Water Act violations, including 882 reported sewage overflows from 2016 to 2021. Together, those overflows represented more than 21 million gallons of sewage leaving Baytown’s system without treatment.
These overflows matter because untreated sewage can carry harmful pollutants into waterways and neighborhoods. Baytown’s wastewater system connects to waterways that flow toward Trinity Bay and Galveston Bay, including Cedar Bayou, Goose Creek, the San Jacinto River, and Tabbs Bay. Some of these waterways have been listed as impaired because they do not meet water quality standards.
BCWK’s analysis also found that the highest-volume overflows had a disproportionate impact on Hispanic/Latinx communities in Baytown. This adds to the environmental burdens many Baytown residents already face from living near industrial facilities, flood risks, and other sources of pollution.
After BCWK served its notice, the U.S. Department of Justice, on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency, and the State of Texas filed a civil enforcement action against the City of Baytown in April 2022. The lawsuit alleges that Baytown failed to properly operate and maintain parts of its wastewater collection and treatment system, leading to sewage releases that violated the Clean Water Act, the Texas Water Code, and state-issued permits.
BCWK intervened in the case to participate directly and advocate for a resolution that reflects the experiences of Baytown residents most affected by sewage pollution.
As the case moves forward, BCWK continues to push for reduced sewage overflows, stronger public transparency, meaningful community involvement, and long-term protection for Baytown’s waterways.
What can residents do?
Residents play an important role in identifying and reporting sewage problems.
If you see or experience a possible sewage overflow, you can:
- avoid contact with the sewage or contaminated water;
- take photos or notes from a safe distance;
- write down the location, date, time, odor, color, and any visible impacts;
- report the issue to your city or local wastewater provider;
- report water pollution concerns to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality;
- share your experience with BCWK if you want help understanding how the issue connects to larger clean water advocacy.
Community reports help show where infrastructure failures are happening and how they affect daily life. This information can support stronger enforcement, better public investment, and cleaner water for the Houston region.
Community Resources
Poo Reports
Bayou City Waterkeeper’s monthly Poo Report monitors the City of Houston’s compliance with the consent decree. As the City invests, our Monthly Poo Report aims to help our community to see how this investment is (or is not) making a difference across Houston and closely monitor the City’s compliance with the consent decree.
Justice in the Sewers
BCWK has translated the city of Houston’s reports into an interactive map. This map looks at the data received so far from the city through its consent decree-mandated reports, alongside the U.S. Census Bureau data reflecting income and race or ethnicity. These visualizations reveal ongoing sewer overflows across the city, both from the city-owned system and problems on private property, for which the city has disclaimed any responsibility.