By Marty Kufus
January 9, 2002
Wilson County News

With voting on aquifer-district annexation to begin next week in southern Bexar County, the San Antonio Water System announced Thursday it had updated plans for pumping there and could make do with much less Carrizo Aquifer water — and for a shorter interval.
SAWS now proposes a “worst-case scenario”: pumping up to 14,000 acre-feet (some 4.56 billion gallons) annually during “stage 3” metro-water restrictions if drought hit during the critical years of 2004 and 2005.
“We’re not going to be pumping 30,000” acre-feet a year from the Carrizo in southern Bexar County, Eugene Habiger, SAWS’ president and chief executive officer, told the Wilson County News on Thursday.
The recently updated figures are based on revised projections of future needs and future water from the Edwards Aquifer and other sources in SAWS’ “inventory,” Habiger and members of his staff explained.
SAWS also plans to begin injecting surplus Edwards Aquifer water into a small portion of the Carrizo Aquifer in late 2003 — if the weather cooperates with plentiful rain.
The southern-most tip of Bexar County is the main site of SAWS’ planned $215 million “Twin Oaks” aquifer storage and recovery and water-production project in the Carrizo. The site occupies about 3,000 acres of land (with some spillover into Wilson and Atascosa counties).
SAWS originally bought the land for aquifer storage and recovery. Later, its technical consultant, CH2M Hill Inc., calculated a maximum of 30,000 acre-feet (about 9.78 billion gallons) could be pumped annually from the Carrizo if needed from 2003 to 2010 — and probably longer.
Some neighbors of SAWS’ southern-Bexar property, however, objected that production could “draw down” their private wells.
A grass-roots petition drive last summer compelled the board of the Evergreen Underground Water Conservation District — Wilson, Karnes, Atascosa, and Frio counties — to schedule the election on annexation.
The district is headquartered in Pleasanton. The Evergreen’s rules forbid aquifer storage and recovery, and its production-pumping limit is 2 acre-feet (about 652,000 gallons) per acre of land, per year.
Those restrictions are seen as a potential problem for SAWS in southern Bexar County.
Open house
SAWS and its new partner in rural water management, the Bexar Metropolitan Water District, have scheduled an “information open house” for Sunday, Jan. 13.
It will be held from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., in the El Carmen Catholic Church’s community center, 18555 Leal Rd., in southern Bexar.
Staff members from SAWS and BexarMet will attend to answer questions from the public.
“We want this issue to be debated on facts and not fears,” Habiger said.
He acknowledged his organization has not done a good job in clearly explaining the goals in its southern-Bexar project or its neighborly commitments.
“We need to do a better job of telling the story,” Habiger said. “It is unfortunate that we’ve heard rhetoric that puts emotion in this issue, when emotion is not a factor and we should be dealing with facts.”
Recently published remarks from an Evergreen official were “unequivocally … not fair” in describing SAWS’ position in southern Bexar, Habiger said.
Evergreen General Manager Mike Mahoney was quoted at length in the WCN’s Dec. 26 story headlined, “SAWS, BexarMet ganging up on Evergreen district?” (In it, he suggested there “are forces that are working against the election process.”)
“It’s just unfortunate that Mr. Mahoney is using that kind of language,” SAWS’ local-government and community-relations officer, Hilda Bustos, said earlier last week. “This is not David and Goliath … it does not reflect the spirit of the relationship we hope to build with the Evergreen.”
In October, SAWS proposed “cooperative management” with the Evergreen.
SAWS officials pledged to mitigate any future harm to neighboring wells in the area of the Twin Oaks site, and to monitor the Carrizo with the Evergreen’s staff. In return, the Evergreen’s board would agree to not annex into southern Bexar. The board took no action on the offer.
A BexarMet official, in a separate phone interview last week, also took issue with Mahoney’s remarks.
“Essentially, the article … mentioned something about BexarMet being opposed to annexation and the electoral process,” water-resources Manager Chuck Ahrens said. “The BexarMet board of directors has not taken a position on annexation.”
“We very much understand the importance of that [electoral] process,” Ahrens said. “We are not fighting that process, and would not consider fighting as long as it is conducted in compliance with applicable law.”

Decisions

Early voting begins Jan. 16 in the clubhouse of the Waterwood Park subdivision, located off I-37 along Priest-Mathis Road.
Election-day voting Feb. 2 also will be held there, Evergreen officials said.
The area proposed for annexation by the rural Evergreen district is formed by the Atascosa and Wilson county lines, S.H. 16 on the west, Loop 1604 on the north, and U.S. 181 on the east.
The ballot will ask voters whether they will accept the district’s property tax of 1.74 cents per $100 valuation, and to chose two representatives to the Evergreen’s board.
During the phone interview, SAWS’ president asked whether the rural residents really would want to pay property taxes for the Evergreen’s annexation — and its regulation of the area’s ground water.
“If there is a negative impact [from future pumping], and I say if,” Habiger said, then SAWS already has pledged a three-point mitigation policy for the benefit of local residents.
“That same mitigation policy is going to apply to the Trinity [aquifer, north of San Antonio],” he said. “So we are trying to be a good neighbor to the south and the north.”
As to SAWS’ updated production plan for 2004-5 and its trigger of stage-3 restrictions, Habiger said a severe drought like that has occurred in San Antonio only “10 times in 70 years.”
During “stage 3,” the Edwards Aquifer Authority cuts back all permitted water use by 15 percent, Habiger said.
News coverage of local and regional water topics, dating to September 1999, is available in the “Water Related Issues” archive at www.wilsoncounty news.com.
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