San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Pipes in protected areas put on hold
SAWS board halts plan for water, sewer lines on land saved for aquifer
After watching development spring around them over the years, Scott Gruendler and his wife purchased 86 acres in far North Bexar County in 2015 with the intent of preserving their natural grandeur.
Gruendler’s cows and horses graze the land along Specht Road. When it rains, the normally dry creeks swell and replenish the Edwards Aquifer — San Antonio’s primary source of drinking water.
Gruendler entered into a conservation easement with the city last June to protect the land from sprawl. Less than a year later, the San Antonio Water System is threatening to dig trenches through his property for large water and sewer pipelines to serve a nearby planned development of up to 420 homes.
“We wanted to protect this property,” Gruendler said, adding that building the pipelines wouldn’t be in the spirit of his easement. “It’s not what the city of San Antonio taxpayers paid for.”
Since 2000, voters have agreed in four elections to a 1/8-cent sales tax to buy sensitive land over the Edwards watershed to protect the city water supply. They decided in November to redirect the tax for workforce training. But SAWS has agreed to continue buying easements for the foreseeable future.
The SAWS board twice gave preliminary approval to the pipeline plan. But given concerns about the protected land, the board put a hold on the project last week and demanded a risk assessment before moving forward.
If the pipelines are built, it would mark a first for SAWS, which has never placed water and sewer pipelines through conservation easements, SAWS President and CEO Robert Puente said.
Annalisa Peace, executive director of the Greater Edwards Aquifer Alliance, said the case is “precedent setting” and could influence the future treatment of protected lands.
“This issue puts a spotlight on just how problematic the lack of coherent policy is when SAWS service seemingly conflicts with our city’s goals for aquifer protection,” she said.
SAWS board members said they felt left in the dark after approving the sewer and water lines last June and in January, unaware at the time the lines would run through two properties with conservation easements. Puente said the utility failed to tell the board about the issue.
“We voted on it without all of the information that would be important for us,” said Amy Hardberger, SAWS assistant board secretary.
Mayor Ron Nirenberg, who also sits on the board, agreed. “There’s a lot of red flags when there’s an easement in the area,” Nirenberg said, “and to have that information at the board before (utility service agreements) are approved is entirely necessary.”
The pipelines would provide service to the 173-acre Specht Tract on the northern edge of the SAWS service area. In anticipation of growth, SAWS had signed an agreement with the developer, Meritage Homes, to run oversized water and sewer mains to the site.
Pipelines can be as small as 8 inches in diameter. But SAWS wants to dissect land along the route with water mains of up to 24 inches in diameter and sewer lines up to 15 inches in diameter.
Meritage Homes did not respond to requests for comment.
The lines would run through the Gruendler and Chapman ranches — both of which are about 86 acres and are protected by the Edwards Aquifer Protection Program.
A third nearby area called Manteufel is under consideration for a conservation easement, said Andrea Beymer, SAWS vice president of engineering and construction.
To date, the aquifer program has set aside 163,700 acres in Bexar, Medina and Uvalde counties. The program also has spent millions of dollars in recent years on the San Antonio greenway trails.
When the city buys its final contracted easements next year, it will have spent $325 million since the tax was first approved.
City staff and the Edwards Aquifer Authority have requested additional measures for the pipelines, such as erosion protection and revegetating the disturbed land. They also want a concrete encasement around the sewer line in the 100-year floodplain and notification prior to construction, Beymer said.
“The idea behind upsizing is to just have (the land) disturbed once so we don’t have to keep going through it,” SAWS spokesman Gavino Ramos said.
After seeing the risk assessment, which Beymer hopes will happen in June, the board can rescind the agreement for oversized pipes. But Puente warned that alternate infrastructure could be worse over the aquifer.
Other options include treatment plants and multiple lift stations, which have the potential for mechanical pump failures, leading to sewage releases into the recharge zone, Beymer said.
“Again, that’s a whole slew of bad consequences,” Puente said. “Eventually the developer is going to develop, and they will choose the route that’s best for them and we’ll have no opportunity to be involved in it.”
As one of the fastest-growing cities in the country, San Antonio for decades has expanded mainly to the north and west, placing some subdivisions directly over the Edwards watershed.
Growth and development on the recharge zone run the risk of polluting the aquifer and reducing the runoff into caves and other features that replenish it.
Regulations are in place to limit pollution and the amount of “impervious cover” from buildings and roads that block rainfall from reaching the aquifer. But protecting land from development in the first place has long been the preference of voters and environmentalists.
Conservation and growth are “coming to a predictable collision course,” said Hardberger, the assistant board secretary.
Peace and the Greater Edwards Aquifer Alliance have asked the city to create a task force to advise SAWS when it plans new water and sewer lines over the Edwards watershed and to show how the utility’s expansion is encouraging sprawl.
Nirenberg told the SAWS board that he wanted to restart growth management discussion between the city and its utilities.
“We need policy,” Nirenberg said. “It seems like we’ve been having this conversation every month about the need for a coordinated growth strategy with the city. We’ve been asking for it for eight years.
“It’s causing problems here; it’s causing problems downstream with developments,” he continued. “And the last thing I want to see happen is us lose our ability to produce sustainable, affordable housing because we simply haven’t done our jobs from a policy standpoint on our growth management practices.”
Puente concurred, saying SAWS needs guidance from the City Council.
Until there’s a plan, SAWS’ Ramos said, the utility is making decisions “on the fly” and hopes they will come together.
“Everybody’s hands are handcuffed,” Ramos said.