By Marty Kufus

KENEDY — In lawyer-like fashion, regional water planners Thursday scrutinized the wording in chapters of the upcoming draft of their “initially prepared plan.”

Further deliberation and a vote on the tentative plan are scheduled for an Aug. 17 workshop. The voluminous document then goes to the printer the next day, officials said.

Wilson and other counties will receive two copies the end of this month for public study and comment. The final plan is due Jan. 5 in Austin at the Texas Water Development Board.

Planners Thursday also heard a report on the findings from 30 “focus group” meetings conducted last month in the 20 1-2 county “Region L.”

Members of the public

“We have edited the language down to PG,” Maggie Moorhouse, the South Central Texas Regional Water Planning Group’s public-information/participation contractor, joked.

Her subcontractor, Scott Elliff, explained that the membership of the 21 counties’ focus groups was based on county judges’ nominees, with suggestions from some legislators.

Additionally, eight special-interest civic and environmental groups in Bexar County and one concerned with Gulf Coast bays and estuaries were interviewed.

All told, of the 910 people invited to the focus groups, 299 attended, Elliff said.

Each group was asked six standard questions: about members’ “regional” and “local” perspectives on the advantages and disadvantages of regional water planning, and about likes and dislikes.

Many of the responses concerned specific regional “options,” or possible water projects.

“People were very excited” over proposals for demand-reduction conservation in municipal and irrigational water use, Elliff said.

Some, he said, expressed concerns that long-range forecasts of water demand in the region are low; also, that some water-supply options might carry staggering price tags.

Some of the participants’ uncertainties echoed those of the planners themselves.

For example, a number of focus-group participants brought up the environmental effects, in Gulf Coast bays and estuaries, of a possible desalination project and pipeline diversions of water from the lower Guadalupe and Colorado rivers.

In recent Region L sessions, nonvoting planner Norman Boyd, a Texas Parks and Wildlife official at Port O’Connor, has voiced his concerns about reduced river flows into the two estuaries; the discharge of a “hypersaline” byproduct from a desalination plant into Cox, Lavaca, or Mata-gorda bays; and, the impact of a desalination plant’s seawater intake in an estuary.

(Planners Thursday still were fine-tuning the wording of a statement on “environmental benefits and concerns” of the draft regional plan.)

Mitigation — compensation for projects’ effects on third parties — was another concern for some focus-group participants.

“‘So, is anybody thinking about what’s going to happen when my well runs dry?’” Elliff said, quoting one participant.

Elliff also highlighted one “perception” among some focus-group participants from rural counties and even Bexar County, of the “inappropriateness of municipal water-pricing.”

Regional planner Bill West, general manager of the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority, asked Elliff what “inappropriateness” meant.

He replied, paraphrasing focus-group comments, “If water wasn’t so cheap in San Antonio, they’d save more water.”

The executive summary in Moorhouse’s 157-page report identified two “consistent themes,” among 39, from focus groups’ feedback: “Conservation is not enough (San Antonio is wasteful)”; and, “San Antonio does not pay enough for their water.”

And another theme: “No [large, new] reservoirs.”

A general consensus, Elliff told planners, is that focus-group members appreciated the effort at creating a regional water plan — even if they don’t agree with or like all aspects of it as it is shaping up.

“If nothing else, everybody’s talking about water now,” Elliff said, paraphrasing focus-group remarks.

Options — and money

Planners Thursday made no significant changes to the list of water-supply and conservation “options” they assembled this summer.

On the list, the only new-reservoir option is for the eventual construction of a 2,900-acre “Lockhart Reservoir” in Caldwell County, where there is support by local government, according to planning documents.

In “public comment” Thursday, a spokesman for the Wilson County Water Action Project repeated her plea for Region L planners to permanently drop the “Cibolo Reservoir” from any current and future considerations.

Under Senate Bill 1, the state’s 1997 omnibus water law, the 16 regional plans will be re-examined every five years, and are subject to amendment as needed.

Planners took no action on the request.

A limit on future export pumping of the Carrizo Aquifer in Wilson County, based on a “safe yield” figure calculated recently by the Evergreen Underground Water Conservation District — 11,196 acre-feet a year — remains firmly established in the options list.

An acre-foot equals about 325,860 gallons, or enough water for about eight people a year.

(The options list was printed in the Aug. 2 Wilson County News, and still appears at www.wilsoncountynews.com, “Water-Related Issues” archive. Region L’s official Web site is at www.watershed-experience.com )

One point of discussion Thursday was how far the Region L group should go, in its final plan, in recommending the Legislature spend taxpayers’ money on future water projects.

Large projects, such as pipelines from existing or new water sources, presumably would be developed by local entities such as the San Antonio Water System (SAWS) or by partnerships of water entities.

The addition of state money would allow a project, such as a pipeline, to be built to a larger scale, and that could benefit other communities in the future, some planners said Thursday.

“The state Legislature has repeatedly put barriers” up to water development, remarked planner Greg Ellis, general manager of the Edwards Aquifer Authority.

Such governmental barriers force “major demand centers” to turn to more expensive alternatives in water development, he said.

The state should help out, Ellis reasoned.

Planner Darrell Brownlow, a self-employed geologist from Wilson County, asked Ellis if he was suggesting state “subsidies” for expensive projects.

“It may open up a can of worms,” Brownlow said.

He said he didn’t have an answer, but feared Region L planners might publish “a broad-based statement” about a complicated issue.

“What we’re talking about is funding,” said regional planner Fred Pfeiffer, the retired general manager of the San Antonio River Authority. “There are reasons to build to the optimum size one time.”

The point, added planner West, is to try “to get the state into the [water] utility infrastructure.”

Interregional

The amount of ground water available to Region L from Bastrop County, located in the neighboring Lower Colorado region (“Region K”), came into question Thursday.

Region K representative Stovy Bowlin, general manager of the Barton Springs-Edwards Aquifer Conservation District, said his planning group’s consulting engineers have used different computer models and user-group projections than Region L.

Bastrop County figures into two Region L options.

But Region K’s current projection of water available for interregional export from Bastrop is only 5,000 acre-feet annually, according to Bowlin.

That is significantly less than what Region L planners have in mind. It illustrates the challenge and complexity of interregional water planning.

SAWS’ board of directors has a contract with aluminum manufacturer Alcoa to buy 40,000 acre-feet a year of Simsboro Aquifer water. Alcoa already discharges about 30,000 acre-feet a year into the Brazos River in order to keep the aquifer water out of its lignite-coal mines in Milam and Lee counties, according to a recent news report.

SAWS also has a contract with City Public Service for 15,000 acre-feet of Simsboro water a year from CPS’ holdings in Bastrop and Lee counties, according to the July 4 San Antonio Express-News.

With a total projected yield of 55,000 acre-feet, SAWS’ two planned Simsboro projects together are known as Region L’s option “SCTN-3c.”

The Simsboro is part of the vast Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer system.

SAWS’ deal with Alcoa has received strong opposition from some residents in that area, according to news reports, and was denounced during “public comment” at a July 18 meeting of the region L and K groups. (Some misgivings about the Alcoa deal even were reflected in focus-group comments from SAWS’ “Civilian Advisory Panel.”)

Bastrop County also appears in a Region L option with Gonzales County.

Option “CZ-10D” sees the eventual pumping of a total of 27,500 acre-feet a year from the Carrizo Aquifer in those two counties.

Comal and Guadalupe counties would receive the Carrizo water via pipelines, according to planning documents.

If Bastrop County is good for only 5,000 acre-feet a year according to Region K’s figures, a Region L planner asked Thursday, does that put one of the options in jeopardy?

A combination of the two options, Bowlin replied, might exceed Region K’s water-availability limits.

The two groups needed to reconcile their calculations for Bastrop County.

“If the regions cannot agree on the numbers,” said nonvoting Region L planner Jorge Arroyo, an official with the state water board, then the water board will have to decide.

A meeting was planned for Monday in Austin between Region L’s consultants from HDR Engineering Inc., and Region K’s engineering consultants with Turner Collie & Braden Inc., Bowlin said later.

Region L’s planning workshop on Aug. 17 is scheduled to begin a 9 a.m., at the San Antonio River Authority near downtown San Antonio.