As water becomes increasingly scarce in the Hill Country, a local committee charged with long-range planning for Kendall County is considering various options to supplant future supplies.
The Hill Country has been struck by nearly record-setting drought conditions the past year, and the county remains at the top of a national monitor listing the region’s dearth of water as “exceptional.”
These conditions are not expected to improve and, confronted by booming development, the Kendall County Water Committee is seeking solutions to maintain future water needs.
“Sometimes, it feels like we’re trying to serve people,” Boerne Utilities Director Mike Mann told the committee. “But really what we’re trying to do is manage both growth and demand of water.”
One question that has floated to the surface of several public meetings, including those of the Cow Creek Groundwater Conservation District and larger, regional water conservationists, is whether planning should be centered around the 2011 and 1950s droughts of record.
During a meeting earlier this month, Cow Creek directors noted current water levels and drought issues are rivaling those of 2011, which is classified as one of the driest years in recorded Texas history.
During regional water planning for 2022, officials decided to use data rather than projections, according to district President Milan Michalec.
However, local planners can include projections for droughts worse than the drought of record if needed, he added.
CCGCD Precinct 4 Director Curt Campbell said state planners gave regional groups the opportunity to provide data on a drought worse than the state’s drought of record, but he said regional planners — including those in Kendall County — decided not to at this time because it was unclear which drought to consider.
Tommy Matthews, the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority representative on the water committee, said it might behoove his colleagues to “take a critical look” at drought-contingency plans proactively rather than reactively and challenge some of the assumptions found in current guidelines.
During the committee meeting late last month, longtime resident John Kight urged the water planners to be realistic in their considerations, noting the firm yield – which he added was a theoretical concept to begin with – can’t simply be divided by number of users and average-use per person.
Firm yield is defined by hydrologists as the maximum yield that could have been delivered without failure during a historical drought of record.
Kight said by taking the daily use in the city and dividing it by the number of users to calculate average daily use, the committee is lumping in commercial users.
“You got to remember, in the ‘50s, there wasn’t but 5,000 people here,” Kight said. “And they were mostly rural people. They didn’t have these watered yards and something that’s always bothered me to see: the walk-in bathtubs. They use 50 to 60 gallons of water for one bath. That’s ridiculous.”
Kendall County resident Alex Rudd, who has been very vocal about the growing water issues in Texas, acknowledged a need for balance in growth, saying Boerne is in need of “economic growth and development and a healthy economy,” but she worries local leaders lack caution.
Using Arizona as an example, Rudd recalled a 100,000-home development planned near Scottsdale. She said the developer claimed there was enough water under the lots which, if combined with conservation efforts, made the plans sustainable.
Then, she said Scottsdale announced the city no longer had water “ to spare” to truck to 500 homes in the development.
Rudd said decades of urban sprawl combined with an unexpected mega-drought led to a dwindling water supply.
“We are equally vulnerable to this curveball from a combination of climate change, increased population and the prediction that this area will become increasingly arid as the mega-drought spreads throughout the east,” she warned the committee. “We may be looking at more areas with permanent desert.”
Furthering the message echoed by many leaders and county residents, Rudd said the 1950s drought conditions may no longer be a reliable benchmark.
Beyond finding alternate water sources, Rudd said sustainable growth measures need to be enacted.
However, she said, “Politics trump common sense.”
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