The San Antonio Water Systems board is seeking to withdrawal its exclusive rights to provide water and wastewater to any areas in Kendall County after the developer of the contentious Lily Ranch development at the southern border of Kendall County went before the board seeking an answer on utility services.
The SAWS board voted in favor of transferring its water and wastewater rights to SJWTX – the subsidiary of a California-based company that purchased Kendall West Utility last year – and is looking to pursue a wholesale wastewater service agreement with the new water provider. SAWS already has begun building out an oversized, 24-inch wastewater line that runs along Old Fredericksburg Road near Fair Oaks Ranch with the intention of developing a regional lift sand gravity station.
Now that SAWS has voted to move toward releasing its certificates of convenience and necessity, which grants the agency exclusive right to provide water or sewer services in its Certificates of Convenience & Necessity boundaries, the transfer will go before the San Antonio City Council for consideration and be filed for approval from the Public Utilities Commission.
“It’s been a long time coming,” SAWS board member Amy Hardberger said. “I just do want to recognize that we understand there are still some concerns about how these areas might be developed, but I think it’s important for us to remember as a water utility, we have built in some assurances that I think are appropriate for a water utility.”
While the large public utilities agency is divesting itself of its right to sell services beyond its northern border with Kendall County, the drafted agreement with SJWTX requires the new operating company to pay all of the legal fees associated with the transfer and a $50,000 lump sum. Additionally, the agreement guarantees SAWS’ requirements for wastewater infrastructure be met and limits future wholesale services for wastewater to 1,500 single-family units, essentially capping the development reach without finding alternative wastewater services.
“We are not a zoning authority, even though I don’t necessarily disagree with some of the things that may need to happen in this area,” Hardberger said. “I think as the (board) chair mentioned, there might be further points of entry at other stages that are not water utility specific. There’s been conversations for a long time about Kendall County getting zoning authority. But we’re San Antonio Water Systems, so I think what we’re doing in releasing this is reflecting the fact that we feel the development is outside of our sort of authority or purview and how that gets developed.
“… I do think it’s the right thing for us to divest ourselves. And I think that in future conversations about wholesale water, we’re going to have to revisit this because I would not want us to have gone through all this just for an inrun to then sell the water where we have no sort of leverage at that point. So, we’ll be looking for that conversation going forward if it comes up.”
The scope of SAWS’ reach into Kendall County was already small in comparison to its 500,000-acre CCN overall, with 520 acres of its water and 317 acres of its wastewater CCNs having overlapped when a previous board wanted the SAWS CCN to match the city of San Antonio’s extraterritorial jurisdiction.
The conversation among the SAWS board was ignited after the developer of the Lily Ranch subdivision urged the water suppliers to make a decision, saying they were at a standstill in platting and development as they waited for services. While the dense, 120-acre development of hundreds of homes set 10 feet apart has been a source of contention among the Kendall County commissioners and residents alike, the SAWS board noted the developer had made concessions in its platting, including reducing lot counts.
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