Hill Country seeking to avoid being left high and dry
Web Posted: 08/02/2007 10:49 PM CDT
BOERNE — Water conservation, rainwater capture and brush removal can help keep faucets flowing in Hill Country areas of fast growth, declining aquifers and limited surface water supplies.Calls for regional coordination on those initiatives were aired this week at a water forum here, along with a warning that despite recent heavy rains, the Trinity Aquifer level barely has rebounded in places.
Tommy Mathews, chairman of the local water board, said combined pumping from wells across Kendall County already might exceed the annual draw of 4,840 acre-feet of water considered "sustainable" by the Cow Creek Groundwater Conservation District.
The district is expected to stop issuing new permits for commercial pumpers once that limit is hit, although officials say permits likely will be available for domestic and livestock uses. An acre-foot is 325,851 gallons.
A study is under way to determine the exact pumping volume in the county, where the population has grown 33 percent to about 32,000 — and an average of nearly 300 residential well permits per year have been issued — since 2000.
The groundwater supply has been supplemented by water piped in from Canyon Lake by the Guadalupe Blanco River Authority, but GBRA General Manager Bill West said at Wednesday's forum that all of the available water in the pipeline is spoken for.
Among the GBRA customers is the city of Boerne, whose 10,000 residents enjoy a level of certainty about future water sources that's envied by rural neighbors, including some who've seen their wells dry up in recent droughts.
Combined with Boerne's own reservoir and its nine wells, there's enough water to serve 25,000 residents, City Manager Ron Bowman said.
The city's water can be stretched if conservation measures are stepped up and the city pursues plans to pump treated wastewater back into Boerne Lake for reuse as drinking water.
Rainwater capture programs were in the spotlight when the water forum was launched last year by the Greater Boerne Chamber of Commerce. This year, there was increased talk about brush control.
Some 65,000 acres have been cleared of mesquite and ash juniper (better known to Texans as "cedar") in the Pedernales River basin since 2002.
The Legislature this year allocated $3.6 million to the Texas State Water and Soil Conservation Board for brush control programs, said Tuffy Wood, program specialist for the agency.
The project started in San Angelo in 1999 and has expanded to seven river watersheds, he said.
Wood estimated nearly half of all rainfall never reaches the soil in areas thick with ash juniper because it's caught in the canopy and absorbed in the mulch.
He said the grant program covers 70 percent of brush-clearing costs — an estimated $180 an acre in the Pedernales basin areas of Gillespie, Blanco and Hays counties — with the balance paid by landowners.
"In the past there has not been any money for the Guadalupe basin, but that is a project we are looking at heavily now," Wood said Thursday. "I'm assuming they will get some."
Cow Creek board member John Kight, a former Kendall County commissioner, said a coordinated brush-clearing program is needed here.
He predicted clearing 100,000 acres of brush in Kendall County could translate into 130,000 more acre-feet of rainwater annually for aquifers, rivers and streams.
"We're going to run out of water if we don't do something to help ourselves," Kight said.
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