Forrest Wilder

The end of the hill country

Staff writer, The Texas Observer, Sep 29, 11.

Tagged with water, development, growth, conservation

Critical decisions are coming down the pike this summer that could determine the fate of Texas water for the next 50 years. By Sept. 1, 16 groundwater management areas must decide how much groundwater to leave in aquifers. The long-simmering tension between conservation is Drill, Baby, Drill are coming to a boil.

In the Panhandle, one conservation-wise water district has gotten crosswise with water rancher Boone Pickens over how much water to leave in the Ogallala Aquifer. Naturally, there’s a lawsuit.

But nowhere are the choices more painful than in the Texas Hill Country, where rivers, springs and water wells are highly sensitive to groundwater levels. (Grandiose aside: It’s helpful to discard the legal and political fiction that surface water and groundwater are two separate realms. There is simply water.)

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Simply put: There are too many straws pumping too much water. And more straws go in every day.

“There’s a direct correlation between increased pumping and reductions in water levels, reductions in spring flow, and reductions in creek and river flow,” says Ron Fieseler, general manager for the Blanco-Pedernales Groundwater Conservation District. “That’s the real challenge – how much pumping can we stand and maintain the quality of life out here in the Hill Country that’s so wrapped around the creeks and rivers?”

So what are groundwater planners to do?

“We’re not going to make everybody happy no matter what we choose,” Fieseler says. “We’ve seen everything from ‘don’t pump anymore, just stop it now’ to ‘double the pumping’.”

These groundwater districts are in the unenviable position of having to address issues way above their pay grade.

So it looks like they’re going to split the difference: try to accommodate some level of growth while not running full throttle.

The trouble with that, though, is that it’s going to slowly sap the liquid life out of the Hill Country.

Full Story: The End of the Hill Country
Source: The Texas Observer, July 20, 2010

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