By By Marty Kufus
Wilson County News

PLEASANTON — In a new round of rural-metro negotiations, the Evergreen Underground Water Conservation District is offering the San Antonio Water System a mutual non-interference pact for southern Bexar County.

If approved, the proposal would be a cornerstone in a broader, interlocal agreement on a small portion of the Carrizo Aquifer, according to discussion.

"We can say [to SAWS], ‘We’ve bent over backwards … What is your complaint now?’" Evergreen General Manager Mike Mahoney told the board members.

They approved the proposal July 23, voting 6 to 0.

It was a careful response to a rough draft of an interlocal agreement Mahoney received July 15 from Susan Butler, SAWS’ director of water resources development.

Under the Evergreen’s three-point proposal, if SAWS agrees to "not interfere with the annexation process" in southern Bexar, the Evergreen — if it ever extended its jurisdiction into that county as the result of another election — would:

• issue a permit for SAWS’ aquifer storage and recovery. The ASR project has been under development in the southern-most tip of Bexar for more than two years at a cost of millions of dollars.

Evergreen officials, in separate work to revise the district’s rules, last week agreed that although ASR now is banned in the district, it could be allowed as long as "compatible ground water" is injected for storage, based on sound science.

The district comprises Wilson, Atascosa, Karnes, and Frio counties.

The Evergreen also proposes it would:

• waive the district’s "transportation fee" for Edwards Aquifer water SAWS stored in the Carrizo and then piped from the district (back to San Antonio, in drought); and,

• issue production-pumping permits "that will allow SAWS to produce up to 32,000 acre-feet [total] over a five-year period with production of up to 14,000 acre-feet in any given year. …" After the first five years, if SAWS has complied with the district’s rules, the five-year permit would be renewed with an "annual production allowance."

The Evergreen’s rule for "production" (the use of larger non-household wells, such as for industry, crop irrigation, or municipal supply) allows the pumping of up to 2 acre-feet of water per acre of land owned per year, with certain spacing limits.

An acre-foot is about 325,860 gallons.

SAWS owns about 3,000 acres in the southern tip of Bexar, with another 200 acres spilling into Atascosa and Wilson counties.

Trying to silence southern-Bexar neighbors’ protests about future "draw down" of their wells, SAWS officials vowed to pump no more than 14,000 acre-feet a year if needed in 2004 and/or 2005, in the event of "stage 3" restrictions on the Edwards Aquifer.

If SAWS agrees to the July 23 proposal, it could lead to a broader agreement on the management of the Carrizo in southern Bexar, as well as its monitoring from wells drilled in southern Bexar and northern Atascosa and Wilson counties, according to discussion.

The Bexar Metropolitan Water District might be asked to join in the agreement, Evergreen board members said.

President Ken Stephens led the meeting attended by members Paul Bordovsky, Clifton Stacy, Blaine Schorp, Steve Snider, Darrell Brownlow, and Fabian Jendrusch.

Although annexation narrowly failed in May, another election remains a possibility.

The board has not yet formally accepted a fresh set of petitions and new annexational map submitted last month by a group of southern-Bexar residents.

Even if it did, and then ordered an election, the next available election date would come in February, according to discussion.

SAWS’ President Eugene Habiger earlier this month warned the system might take legal action. He alleged that an Evergreen election based on the currently proposed boundaries for annexation would disenfranchise some southern-Bexar voters.

Habiger asked Evergreen officials to wait and consider SAWS’ new proposal for an interlocal agreement.

In other action, the board continued its work on a new rule that, if approved, would require the yearly reporting of the total water pumped by any production well — regardless of its "grandfathered" status.

The proposed rule will be the subject of public hearings and an informational campaign in the coming months, Mahoney told the board.

Only a fraction of the production wells in the four-county district actually have Evergreen permits and, with them, mandatory meters and annual reports to the Evergreen.

Proposed "Rule 6.0, annual reporting for un-permitted, non-exempt wells," would take effect in January 2004 for the 2003 production, according to a draft document.

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