Enlarge This Image Tom Reel / San Antonio Express-News Eagle Pass City Councilwoman Gloria Hernandez speaks to fellow dissenters, including 4-year-old Joaquin Zamarripa and his mother Jessica Ochoa Zamarripa (right) after the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality votes to allow the Dos Republicas coal mine permits to continue operations during the commission's meeting in Austin on July 6.

Enlarge This Image Tom Reel / San Antonio Express-News Maria Torres, tribal chairwoman for the Pacuache Indian Tribe, pumps her fist while holding a map of her people's sacred grounds around the Eagle Pass area in question after the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has voted to allow the Dos Republicas coal mine permits to continue operations during the commission's meeting in Austin on July 6.

AUSTIN — A Mexican company that owns a controversial low-grade coal mine near Eagle Pass scored a regulatory victory Wednesday when the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality voted to let it keep discharging wastewater into tributaries of the Rio Grande.

The decision was a blow to local residents and environmentalists who have spent about two decades fighting Dos Republicas Coal Partnerships’ Eagle Pass mine. Chants of “Shame on you” and “We will stand, we will fight, water is a human right” erupted after the commissioners’ votes as the roughly 40 people opposing the project left the building to express their outrage outside in front of media cameras.

Eagle Pass city councilwoman Gloria Hernandez said the TCEQ and other agencies are not listening to local officials and the thousands of residents who signed a petition opposed to the mine.

“It was very disappointing to come into the commission today and see them ready to just sign off on the dotted line,” she said. “They just gave us a little bit of concessions, some conditions, but the process goes on.”

The coal, which is considered too low-grade to burn in the U.S., is sent to Mexico for use in some of the country’s largest power plants. The company dug out its first load of coal last July after it received a permit in 2013 from the Texas Railroad Commission to mine 2.8 million tons per year from an expanded 6,346-acre site, TCEQ documents state.

Dos Republicas spokesman Rudy Rodriguez said the company’s previous wastewater permit was up for renewal, and it wanted its new permit from the TCEQ to match the designs in its mining permit.

“When it comes to the process and procedure at TCEQ, it’s a very thorough process,” he said. “It’s got nothing to do with politics.”

Enlarge This Image Tom Reel / San Antonio Express-News Chairman Bryan W. Shaw sums up comments as the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality votes to allow the Dos Republicas coal mine permits to continue operations during the commission's meeting in Austin on July 6.
Enlarge This Image Bob Owen / San Antonio Express-News Bulldozers move dirt to expose coal at Dos Republicas Coal Partnerships’ mine just outside Eagle Pass. The coal is considered too low-grade for use in the United States.

The decision is the latest in a series of losses faced by opponents, which include Maverick County Judge David Saucedo and members of the Eagle Pass City Council, in their struggle against Dos Republicas. The company is a subsidiary of Minera del Norte, a partnership of Mexican industrialists that owns four other mines in Mexico and one in Israel.

The opponents lost in October when a state appeals court sided with Dos Republicas after Saucedo refused in 2014 to issue a permit allowing the company to build in a floodplain.

The new TCEQ permit allows Dos Republicas to discharge water that gathers in ponds on the site into nearby Hediondo and Elm creeks. It includes limits on suspended solids, iron, manganese, selenium and pH and, at one discharge point near a fuel-storage area, oil and grease. Rodriguez said the company often sprays the water on its site to control dust.

On Wednesday during the commission’s meeting, lawyers for Maverick County and Environmental Defense Fund sparred with Dos Republicas’ Austin-based attorney Breck Harrison of Jackson Walker over technical issues in the permit.

They debated whether the permit should include limits on aluminum and boron in the wastewater and whether the TCEQ’s staff properly studied the water quality in those creeks before issuing a draft permit, among other issues.

Lawyers for Maverick County and the Environmental Defense Fund first raised the issue of aluminum and boron after high concentrations of the metals were found in wells used to monitor groundwater below the mine. The TCEQ’s Office of the Public Interest Council, which is meant to represent the public in the agency’s dealings, also raised concerns, TCEQ documents state.

“The concentration of constituents in the proposed discharge are largely unknown,” Office of the Public Interest Council attorney Eli Martinez said.

The commissioners decided in favor of Dos Republicas, whose attorneys argued that the aluminum and boron in the groundwater wells were irrelevant since most of the water that collects in the ponds comes from rainfall, not from groundwater.

“The record in this case shows that groundwater is hardly present in the effluent of the Eagle Pass mine,” Harrison said.

They also argued over the relevance of data gathered by David Flores, a scientist hired as an expert witness by Maverick County, who surveyed the creeks last summer and testified that they hosted more fish and other aquatic life than the TCEQ thought.

Dos Republicas’ attorneys countered that Flores did his surveys while the creeks were swollen with rain and found of species that may not ordinarily live in the creeks. Harrison suggested at the meeting that fish might have migrated upstream or from nearby stock tanks.

But nearby resident Luis Martinez, who said he has lived near Elm Creek for 38 years, said he has never seen creek run dry. The creek is one of the few places in the community where people can swim or fish, he said.

In the end, the commissioners voted unanimously not to require aluminum or boron limits or an additional review of the creeks. They did require additional testing of water discharges every two years after a certain period, a measure not included in the draft permit.

George Baxter, a leader in a local environmental group opposing the mine, said Wednesday that opponents are considering whether to take the issue to federal court.

“We’re not giving up,” he said. “We’re exploring every possible avenue.”

bgibbons@express-news.net, Twitter: @bgibbs