The Board of Preserve Our Water strongly supports the following message from David K. Langford, Advisory Board member of the Hill Country Alliance. The POW Board has adopted a resolution on this matter - the willful ignoring of the effects of severe drought in area groundwater planning by Groundwater Management Area 9. That resolution is posted on the Preserve Our Water website and has been distributed to all GMA 9 representatives from the various Groundwater Conservation Districts. Also posted is a brief document (Drought of Record and DFC Planning) that explains why the excuses for ignoring serious drought are baseless.
We urge your attention to this critical matter.
Help Decide the Future of Your Groundwater Today
This Friday the groups responsible for planning the future of Hill Country groundwater will meet in Kerrville to discuss what will happen to the precious resource over the next 50 years. Without your input, very important data and community voices could be left out of their decision-making process. Read HCA Advisory Board member David K. Langford's urgent letter, contact your Groundwater Conservation District no later than Thursday, and view our resources on this important topic.
Dear Friends:
This is really important. Please read carefully and take any action you feel may be appropriate.
As our population has grown, Texas has gotten thirstier -- and there are all manner of plans attempting to provide water for everyone.
Currently, there is a legislatively mandated process taking place that will affect the availability of water to residents of Kerr, Bandera, Blanco, Comal, Hays, Kendall, N. Bexar, N. Medina and S. Travis counties for at least the next 50 years. Some of your neighbors (who must be thanked for their willingness to undertake the tremendous responsibility of this difficult and challenging community service) are making decisions that might ultimately determine whether or not your wells, your springs and your creeks will continue to flow.
On August 29, the groups responsible for managing our local groundwater resources will meet to discuss the 50-year plan to manage the groundwater under our counties. Remember, the outcome of this process could determine the flow of water through the Hill Country for the next half century -- or possibly forever.
Frankly, we all better get involved now, so we don’t find ourselves going thirsty later.
Who are these groups?
For many years, groundwater management in Texas has been handled by local groundwater districts. They provide local input over water resources similar to how school districts manage all aspects of public education. Most of our state’s groundwater districts are established using county borders, which causes problems because the aquifers they manage do not follow political boundaries. In many cases, several groundwater districts manage the same aquifer, but their rules are seldom the same.
(Read more about groundwater and its history in Texas at this helpful site: http://www.texaswatermatters.org/groundwater.htm.)
To help alleviate these difficulties, our Texas Legislature decreed that local groundwater districts would cooperate in Groundwater Management Areas (GMAs) to more appropriately manage their shared groundwater resources. We residents of Kerr, Bandera, Blanco, Comal, Hays, Kendall, N. Bexar, N. Medina and S. Travis counties are governed by GMA 9. (See the map here.)
The GMAs were directed to complete a process that would determine the Desired Future Conditions (DFCs) of their shared groundwater resources for at least the next 50 years. (Desired Future Conditions may also be projected for perpetuity.) GMA 9 is working to complete this process. (http://www.hillcountryalliance.org/public/downloadit.cfm?DocID=487.)
The GMAs, to help with their decisions, primarily have access to information from the Texas Water Development Board about historic use, recharge, storage, and availability predictions called Groundwater Availability Models (GAMs).
Why should you and I care?
Currently, GMA 9 is considering a proposal that might allow for up to a 33-foot draw down of our water table. Imagine what might happen if our water table is lowered 33 feet. Personally, our family is not willing to potentially give up our springs and wells.
Secondly, GMA 9 might not be looking at all the data that's potentially available. Most notably, GMA 9 might be making plans without taking the 1950s "drought of record" into consideration. Do we know what may happen if our water table declines 33 feet, and then we experience a drought of the magnitude of the 1950s scorcher? Under that worst-case scenario, how far down might our water table drop?
(Read the Hill Country Alliance’s official resolution in support of the drought’s inclusion here.)
(Read arguments against the drought’s inclusion here.)
What should we do?
Get informed and get involved quickly.
How do I get involved?
GMA 9 is made up of local groundwater districts from the counties listed above. Please contact your groundwater district representatives and ask them to insist that the GMA 9 process include all data available, especially any regarding the drought of record. Even if any data might be somewhat incomplete, it's still information that should be considered. Our policy-makers MUST have, and use, every available resource to make completely informed decisions.
If you do not know how to reach your groundwater district members, contact your county commissioners. They can tell you how to get in touch with the members of your groundwater district's board.
(See a list of contact information for GCD presidents here.)
What's the timeline?
This process is now on a fast track and your response should be on an equally fast track. All comments must be received by GMA 9 no later than Thursday, August 28. So, please contact your groundwater district sooner. ASAP is highly recommended!
Although the final GMA reports are not due until September 2010, GMA 9 is deliberating with a sense of urgency. While expediting planning processes is generally preferred, it accomplishes less if it’s done without obtaining and using every bit of information reasonably possible.
Attend this meeting!
You should also plan on attending the next GMA 9 meeting, which will be held at 9 a.m. on Friday, August 29 in Kerrville, at UGRA and Headwaters GCD offices at the Guadalupe Basin Natural Resources Center, 125 Lehmann Drive. Be there, be involved in the process, and request 1) that all information possible be considered and 2) that forfeiting 33 feet (or more) of our current water table over the next 50 years is too much to ask of the citizens of GMA 9.
We all understand that growth will occur and that we must plan for it, but our leaders must equally value the folks who are already here. Our family thinks it's ironic, and wrong, that those whose conscientious stewardship has put water into our aquifers for generations -- as have the faithful actions of our more recently-arrived conservation-minded neighbors -- may be "rewarded" by lowered water tables, non-functioning wells, dead springs, and a future that could be unreasonably vulnerable to the devastating effects of drought.
Thank you for lending your voice to this process, and please distribute my letter as you wish,
David K. Langford, Vice President Emeritus, Texas Wildlife Association
P.O. Box 1059, Comfort, TX 78013
dkl [at] westernphotographycompany.com -- 830/995-2147 home or 210/827-0306 mobile
A Final Note: These comments, of course, are specific to GMA 9. However, all Texas counties are subject to the same GMA process. If you have interests in counties other than those in GMA 9, or have friends and neighbors who do, you all should be involved in whichever GMA (there is a total of 16) is making these decisions for the future of your groundwater resources. To determine which GMA governs your county, click on the following link: http://www.twdb.state.tx.us/GwRD/GMA/gmahome.htm, which will take you to the GMA Homepage on the Texas Water Development Board’s website.
This summer, Central Texas is experiencing an "exceptional" drought, the highest intensity of drought as categorized by the U.S. Drought Monitor. Drought means less rainfall to recharge to our underground aquifers and it can also result in higher groundwater pumping demand. As a result, water levels in Hill Country wells are declining and springs are running dry. It’s bad this year, but we’ve seen worse. Back in the 1950s, it took more than seven years for the rains to finally replenish drought-stricken parts of Texas. Frequent drought, combined with population growth, means that we must proceed with great caution in planning for the future of the Hill Country and its groundwater resources.
A few years ago, Texas legislators put a process in place to give local groundwater conservation districts the chance to decide how they want their aquifers - underground water reserves - to look in the future. The groundwater stored in these aquifers naturally supplies people’s wells, springs, and in many cases in the Hill Country, a good portion of the flows of local creeks and rivers.
Through this Groundwater Management Area (GMA) process, local districts have the opportunity to shape the future of these essential natural resources, and everything that depends on them, by deciding what the area’s aquifer will look like in the future. With public input, the districts are given the leeway to adopt a goal, termed a "desired future condition," for each aquifer under their management. The goal can range from preserving water levels in the aquifers, to protecting springflows, to allowing for the aquifer to be depleted over time.
The Hill Country area, Groundwater Management Area 9 (GMA 9), encompasses all or parts of Kerr, Blanco, Hays, Kendall, Bandera, Medina, Comal, Travis and Bexar counties. It also includes the Sabinal, the Medina, the Blanco, the Pedernales, and the Guadalupe Rivers. It includes countless springs and creeks lined with fishing spots and swimming holes. It includes booming natural tourism offering hunting, birding, fishing, and outdoor oriented activities which beckon tourists and locals alike to come enjoy the wonders of the Hill Country. It includes a hot real estate market that spotlights "live water" as a selling point.
It also includes a rapidly growing population that is projected to continue growing well into the foreseeable future. Some area water managers are advocating that the desired future condition of the aquifers be set to meet all of these projected demands, at existing water use rates. That is, they assume we will be continuing our current wasteful water use patterns even as the population of the area doubles over the next few decades. If adopted, such an approach would mean steep declines in groundwater reserves across the Hill Country, and maybe even perpetual drying of springs and creeks that now flow in all but the most severe droughts.
In fact we are already seeing a preview of what might happen if this approach is adopted. Back in the summer of 2000, Jacob’s Well, a continually flowing spring that supports the flows of Cypress Creek in Wimberley and boasts a rich history that dates back to a sacred place for native Americans and a draw for early settlers, stopped flowing for the first time in recorded history.
Are more depressing scenarios like this one, really our "desired future condition"?
The current GMA process provides an important opportunity to shape the future of our Hill Country groundwater resources and guarantee that they remain a viable resource into the future. But that will happen only if Hill Country landowners and those of us city dwellers who enjoy its springs, creeks and rivers get involved and ensure that aggressive water conservation and other measures are used to reduce future groundwater pumping demand.
Groundwater conservation district contact information is available at www.texasgroundwater.org. More information about the groundwater management area process is available at www.texaswatermatters.org/groundwater_gma.htm.
Don’t let this opportunity to preserve the future of our Hill Country groundwater resources go to waste. With sensible management and creative conservation, we can ensure both the economic and environmental prosperity for this unique area of the state.
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Laura Marbury is the Texas Water Project Director for Environmental Defense Fund.
