What is the environmental impact of 3,000 homes? How about 3,000 homes with a privately operated wastewater treatment plant—and just a short shot up gradient from major recharge features that could send potential contamination—up to a million gallons per day or more by permit—into the primary drinking water source of 1.7M people?
Not all housing developments are created equal. That’s one glaring lesson from the fight over Lennar’s Guajolote Ranch and its plans for 2,900 homes over an 1,160-acre parcel in the rapidly disappearing rural lands of Northwest Bexar County.
While area residents have rallied against a proposal, charging it threatens to contaminate local water wells and even pollute the greater Edwards Aquifer, the primarily drinking-water source for residents of greater San Antonio, the trio of commissioners at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality refused to pull the brakes on a permit application for Guajolote’s wastewater treatment plant.
The commissioners approved that permit in October, overriding their own in-house Office of Public Interest Counsel, which urged a delay and further conditions to prevent likely environmental damages.
Lennar, with property at the furthest edges of San Antonio’s infrastructure reach, then set about figuring out how to pay for their wastewater treatment plant. They landed on the idea of a Municipal Utility District (MUD), a political subdivision that generates its own revenue to build and operate water and sewer, or other services that are otherwise unavailable.
That requires they first gain approval from the City of San Antonio, as the project site sits within the city’s ETJ (extra territorial jurisdiction). Lennar would then return to the TCEQ for final MUD approval.
On Wednesday, after a group of project opponents descended on an early discussion of the project, the San Antonio Planning Commission and Technical Advisory Committee set aside January 16, 2026, for a special meeting for Lennar’s MUD request.
An official posting will be published in January, Deceleration was told by the commission’s public liaison.
Only a day earlier, Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai and three of four attending County Commissioners approved a resolution calling on the TCEQ to grant a request for a rehearing on the wastewater permit.
The CEO of San Antonio Water System insists that concessions made by Lennar Homes—including what he described as “increased filtration” requirements—would “minimize any kind of contamination to the aquifer.”
But neighbors of the project are not convinced, many of whom showed up on Wednesday for preliminary conversations at the city’s planning commission in brightly colored shirts reading, “DON’T MUDDY THE WATER.”
They have been supported by prominent skeptics, including Texas State Senator Donna Campbell (R-New Braunfels), who wrote recently against the project that:
“This proposal threatens groundwater integrity, endangered species habitat, and public health, while disregarding TCEQ’s statutory duties under state and federal law.”
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Meeting Details: San Antonio Planning Commission & Technical Advisory Committee / Special Meeting on Guajolote Ranch / 9am January 16, 2026 / Cliff Morton Development and Business Services Center / 1901 S. Alamo St., San Antonio, TX, 78204
