By Marty Kufus
Wilson County News

SAN ANTONIO — Calling themselves "interested observers" of the annexational election in southern Bexar County, metro water officials last week expressed high hopes for aquifer storage and recovery there and said the rural Evergreen district’s proposed rule change to allow ASR is a "positive" development.

The San Antonio Water System held a quarterly "media day" April 30.

Eugene Habiger, SAWS’ president and chief executive officer, introduced himself and three senior officials, spoke on several topics, then opened the session to questions from a handful of reporters.

"We are hoping that whatever comes out of this [southern-Bexar election] has no impact" on SAWS’ aquifer storage and recovery project, Habiger said.

With early voting ending that day and election day coming May 4, he and the other SAWS’ officials avoided any remarks that might be interpreted as political.

The annexational election conducted by the Pleasanton-based Evergreen Underground Water Conservation District — at the behest of dozens of southern-Bexar petitioners — has been viewed as a possible obstacle to SAWS’ future plans to store wet-season surplus from the Edwards Aquifer in a small portion of the Carrizo Aquifer.

The southern-Bexar area proposed for Evergreen annexation — bounded by S.H. 16, Loop 1604, and U.S. 181 — includes SAWS’ 3,000-acre site.

The Evergreen’s rules forbid ASR in the four-county district: Atascosa, Wilson, Karnes, and Frio counties. At a recent board meeting, Evergreen officials favorably discussed a proposed rule change that would allow ASR by permit (April 24 Wilson County News).

Although he had not heard of the proposed change, another SAWS official said it was "not surprising" the Evergreen’s board was considering lifting the ASR ban.

"The Evergreen has not been opposed to [aquifer] storage, but to production," Leonard Young, senior vice president, said.

"That’s positive," he said of the proposed Evergreen rule change.

A SAWS’ proposal in early 2001, based on consulting engineers’ long-range projections of the Carrizo’s pumping (production) capacity in southern Bexar, alarmed some local well owners and ultimately led to the annexational drive.

Joining Habiger and Young at last week’s hour-long press conference, but saying little, were Bob Reeves, the vice president for treatment, and John McBroom, the newly hired vice president for operations.

Addressing the "ugly stuff … as well as the good stuff," Habiger vowed a recent accident that sent treated waste water into a San Antonio neighborhood’s potable-water lines will "never happen again."

Lessons were learned about accident response, he said, and some 200 customer accounts in the River Road neighborhood will have a month’s charges waived in compensation.

A final report on the incident is due at the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission by the end of May, Habiger added.

San Antonio recently reached a milestone: On Feb. 25, the city received water from a source other than the Edwards Aquifer.

The tapping of the Trinity Aquifer in northern Bexar County "is the first step of many steps to wean ourselves off [sole dependence on] the Edwards Aquifer," Habiger said.

In the coming decades, according to discussion, SAWS will pipe in water from other sources: the Carrizo Aquifer in Gonzales County and the lower Colorado and Guadalupe rivers.

However, Habiger said, "people in San Antonio won’t be able to tell the difference" in taste because of SAWS’ treatment and blending.
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