Water woes
Texas lawmakers must protect our precious streams, creeks, rivers and watering holes.
It’s hard to imagine a Hill Country bereft of winding rivers, fast-running streams, lazy creeks and deep, green swimming holes. Where would Mystic, Waldemar and Flaming Arrow campers go to canoe, swim and lounge? If the Blanco River no longer traveled through its distinctive white limestone streambed, would tourists still flock to the city of Wimberly?
Jacob’s Well, the swimming hole on Cypress Creek northwest of Wimberly, has already stopped flowing twice in the past couple of years. Yet misguided water policy proposals under consideration in the Legislature threaten to permanently harm the Hill Country’s scenic and life-sustaining waterways. Lawmakers must protect these precious resources and oppose the legislation that would loosen oversight of groundwater production laws.
Right now a variety of permits are pending for water use in various aquifers that underlie the Hill Country. If all the pending permits for water use were issued, “water levels would drop several hundred feet beneath Hays County, potentially affecting Jacob’s Well, Fern Bank Springs and the Blanco and Guadalupe rivers,” according to environmentalist Jim Blackburn.
It’s not just recreational use of Hill Country streams, creeks and rivers that is in peril. The waterways also support a host of wildlife.
Opposition to legislation filed by state Sen. Juan Hinojosa, DMcAllen, and state Reps. Kyle Kacal, R-Bryan, and Philip Cortez, D-San Antonio, is imperative. The bills — which appear to benefit Greg LaMantia, a politically connected South Texas beer distributor — would result in less regulation of groundwater production.
LaMantia, the owner of the 5,000-acre Needmore Ranch east of Wimberley, is asking for permission to pump as much as 550 gallons of water per minute, for livestock and agriculture, according to the Austin American-Statesman. “Assuming one cow takes 15 gallons of water per day, that is enough water to support 10 cows per acre when most Hill Country ranches run one cow/ calf per 8-15 acre,” Blackburn wrote in a recent update on water issues in the Texas Hill Country.
Groundwater conservation districts — created by the state to regulate withdrawals of water below the surface of the land and to protect landowners from the negative effects of their neighbors’ drilling for water — cover part of the areas affecting the groundwater underneath the Hill Country. But some groundwater conservation districts have rules that are more lax than others.
Under the Hinojosa bill, landowners with more than 1,000 acres that are in the territory of two or more groundwater districts would have the right to choose which district to apply to for permitting. The Cortez bill mandates that groundwater districts issue pumping permits “without notice or opportunity for hearing” to those who own at least 1,000 acres that are in the territory of two or more groundwater districts.
If these bills pass, they will further tilt the water rights’ playing field in favor of large landowners at the expense of the public. If too much groundwater is pumped out of the aquifers underlying the surface of the land, then rivers, streams, creeks and swimming holes can be depleted.
Ultimately, to protect all our waterways, the Legislature must address a conflict that lies at the very heart of Texas water law. The water below ground belongs to the landowner, who historically has been able to pump as much as he likes. Yet the water above ground belongs to the state, which has a duty to preserve it under the Texas Constitution. The Legislature must pass responsible legislation to prohibit pumping that depletes these cherished waterways.
Anyone who doubts that Hill Country water is at risk should travel to Fort Stockton in West Texas, stand on the banks of the once abundant Comanche Springs and stare down at the now dusty streambed. The springs dried up in 1951, the year that Clayton Williams Sr., and other owners of ranchland 10 miles west of Fort Stockton had irrigation wells drilled. The well pumps worked so efficiently that the flow of the springs slowed to a trickle within hours after the pumps started, according to an account in the Texas Observer. It’s been a decade since the spring has flowed reliably.
There is no other place in Texas like the Hill Country. We must protect its magic for future generations.