By Marty Kufus


SAN ANTONIO — Regional water planner Mike Thuss, who also is president and CEO of the San Antonio Water System, admitted he has been called many things in his career.

"I’ve never been called an ‘imperial parasite’ before," Thuss said Sept. 27 after a 3 1/2-hour public hearing at Trinity University.

Fifty-two speakers — one, working into a brief rant about "boondoggles," propaganda, and "imperial parasites" — each had had three minutes at a microphone to praise, critique, or condemn the draft of the "initially prepared plan" of the South Central Texas Regional Water Planning Group.

Praise was scarce for the "Region L" plan.

Most of the 52 speakers clearly were dissatisfied with the draft plan. It covers 20 1/2 counties, and proposes to provide an additional 750,000 acre-feet of water annually by the year 2050. (An acre-foot is 325,860 gallons.)

The total cost of about two dozen water projects or strategies in the draft plan has been estimated at around $15 billion.

Since San Antonio is projected to have the greatest need for more water in coming decades, the city’s residents likely would foot most of that bill.

"The cost of the plan is outrageous," said one speaker, Leslie Ellison, who identified himself as a Presbyterian minister in San Antonio.

A dozen or more speakers condemned the draft plan as too reliant on projects requiring construction of long pipelines, and as downplaying the potential of "recharge and recirculation" for fortifying the Edwards Aquifer.

The hearing was, by design, a one-way street. The 10 attending regional planners and their consultants listened, but did not answer questions that night.

The final regional plan is due Jan. 5 at the Texas Water Development Board, as are those of 15 other planning regions.
Viewpoints

About 300 spectators attended the hearing in Trinity’s Laurie Auditorium.

The night before, a "Region L" hearing was held in Uvalde; on Sept. 25, a hearing was held in Victoria.

A contingent from Wilson County attended all three hearings last week to reinforce a message: No new, large reservoirs — ever. (The draft plan contains no recommendations for projects such as the "Cibolo Reservoir," and recommends only limited export pumping of the Carrizo Aquifer in Wilson County.)

By several accounts, the Victoria and Uvalde hearings, although reflecting rural concerns in a region dominated by San Antonio, still were relatively mild in tone.

The hearing at Trinity University was not.

It probably was more of a sampling of partisan sentiments in San Antonio’s long-running municipal water issues than a true representation of public opinion.

Nearly half, 22, of the speakers mentioned "recharge and recirculation" in positive terms.

It is a complex "management strategy" that proposes the construction of pipelines and small dams across the Edwards Aquifer’s recharge zone in Bexar, Medina, and Uvalde counties. A cornerstone of the plan is the maintenance of flow at the environmentally sensitive Comal Springs.

A majority of regional planners have agreed that recharge and recirculation ("R&R") deserves more technical study.

Their draft plan, however, specifies that R&R may not be used unless the regional plan "is specifically amended."

Several speakers at the hearing, including R&R’s authors, Carol and Kirk Patterson, objected to that restriction.

Another term used frequently by some San Antonio speakers was "augmentation."

That water-management theory reportedly proposes the piping of Edwards Aquifer water from Bexar County to maintain the level of the Comal Springs in New Braunfels. (Regional planners never considered augmentation as an "option.")

If R&R and augmentation worked, several speakers reasoned, endangered species would be protected, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service could back off, and San Antonio could use more of the vast Edwards Aquifer.

Besides the draft plan’s overall, estimated cost, there were several other targets for speakers’ criticism during the public hearing in San Antonio:

oSAWS’ deal with Alcoa for 55,000 acre-feet a year from the Simsboro Aquifer, pumped from a lignite mining operation in Bastrop, Lee, and Milam counties.

oThe "uphill" piping (about 120 miles) of water from the Guadalupe River above the saltwater barrier, mixed with some Gulf Coast Aquifer water. (Estimated construction cost, including treatment plant: $618 million.)

oThe purchase and piping of water from the Lower Colorado River Authority, from somewhere between Bastrop and Bay City. (Preliminary estimate of construction and related costs: $800 million or more.)

oThe piping (about 133 miles) of water from a Gulf Coast desalination plant on San Antonio Bay. (Estimated construction costs: $370 million up to $1.14 billion, depending on the size of the desalination plant.)

There was another unpopular subject during the hearing: endangered species.

Speaker number 16 was Jerry Morrisey, a local member of the Sierra Club: the plaintiff in the federal environmental lawsuit that resulted in pumping limits on the Edwards Aquifer.

As soon as Morrisey said "Sierra Club," several members of the audience booed.

"Hush up!" responded Region L Chairman Evelyn Bonavita, glaring at unruly spectators from behind her microphone. Everybody would be heard, she added.