(continued from Part I) Geologists say pumping in western Hays has already passed the limit of sustainability. Computer modeling by the Texas Water Development Board predicts water-level declines during a severe drought of between 50 and 100 feet across the Trinity, including portions of Bexar, Travis, Kerr, Hays, Blanco and Bandera counties. What would that mean? Hays County got a small taste in 2006. Drought, compounded by overpumping, left about 100 homes near Dripping Springs without water and reduced Onion Creek, which flows through Hays County and South Austin into the Colorado River, to a trickle. A report on the ’06 drought by Austin hydrologist Raymond Slade warns of the consequences of a far worse drought, which “will cause many more wells to become dry and probably result in many thousands of people in the County to be without water. Nobody knows when this will happen but it is likely to occur in the near future.” Onion Creek, he concludes, is likely to stay dry except when there’s significant runoff from storms. Given this harsh reality, Baker says people in Hays County will have to decide whether to trade flowing streams and springs for growth. “It’s a hard conversation to have because no one wants to have limits to what we do,” he says. “But there’s a carrying capacity to these systems.” Water watchers are keen to see what happens in western Hays County. It may hold clues to the future of the Hill Country. “Hays is the canary because it ’s so close to I-35,” says Marbury, the EDF policy specialist. Many Hill Country communities are approaching the limits of sustainability, she says, but “Hays is more dire because I personally feel like they’ve reached the point of no return. Whatever decision they make will be extremely difficult. However, they need to make it soon.” Addressing the water crisis in western Hays County falls to a tiny governmental entity with one full-time employee, five volunteer elected directors, a volunteer geologist, and an $150,000 annual budget. The Hays-Trinity Groundwater Conservation District is one of 96 districts in Texas covering roughly half the state’s landmass. The districts are supposed to be all that stands in the way of the rule of capture, the unique Texas law that essentially says you can pump as much water as you like, your neighbor’s well or stream be damned. If you can pump it, it’s yours. To combat the inevitable depredations of the rule of capture, most of Texas’ groundwater districts can collect taxes, meter wells, set minimum distances between wells, issue permits, and impose pumping limits. The Hays district has few of these powers. The man who wrote the legislation creating the district, former state Rep. Rick Green, an ultraconservative Republican from Dripping Springs who now lectures on the myth of the separation of church and state, designed it that way. “Rick Green thought God would take care of our water,” says Jack Hollon, a retired math teacher and member of the district board who grew up raising Angora sheep on a farm on the Devil’s Backbone, near Wimberley. Green’s 1999 legislation exempted agricultural and single-family residential wells in the district from regulation—98 percent of an estimated 6,500 wells. The district has some authority over water utilities, which provide about half the water in the district. But developers are taking advantage of the district’s generous exceptions by building small, dense developments that require homeowners to provision their own individual, exempt wells. Another perverse provision of the legislation provides that funding for the district primarily comes from a $300 fee on new wells. “It’s like trying to save the buffalo from extinction by selling buffalo hides,” Hollon says. In 2003, Hays voters “confirmed” the district by a 2-1 margin and elected a slate of directors, including Hollon, that was strongly pro-regulation. None of the anti-district candidates, backed by the Hays County Republican Party, won a seat. The group had little power, but that didn’t stop it from setting an ambitious goal: preserving as much water for springs and streams as possible. When directors ran the numbers, it became clear that the aquifer was already tapped out. According to groundwater availability models, the aquifer in western Hays County can sustainably yield about 3,400 acre-feet a year without unduly straining springs and streams. In 2008, pumping topped 4,600 acre-feet. “We’re operating at what we think the aquifer can yield and still maintain spring flow,” says Hollon. As Hollon and the other water managers stand by idly, the pumps proliferate. About 150 to 300 new wells are drilled in western Hays every year. The district has also identified at least 1,500 small tracts of land that are yet to be built on. “I know enough about exponential numbers to be scared,” Hollon says. This summer will be a good test of the aquifer’s limits. The Trinity is approaching the end of the rainfall boost it received in 2007, and the current drought—severe, but not as prolonged as previous one—may well deepen. Absent the ability to set limits on production and require sufficient spacing between wells, sustainability activists are gloomy. As developments keep sprawling across Hays County, the streams will go dry with “increased frequency,” says Andrew Backus, the district president and retired hydrogeologist who lives in Driftwood. “It will be exceptional when they actually flow. ” Why, then, has Rep. Patrick Rose, the Democrat who beat Rick Green in a squeaker of a race in 2002, been reluctant to give the groundwater district greater power to regulate and possibly save the Trinity Aquifer? That question nags conservationists in Hays County. For three sessions, the district and its backers have asked Rose to file a bill granting full regulatory powers. Rose has steadfastly declined, saying that he doesn't think the district should have taxation powers and that the issue is divisive. Four months into this legislative session, he offered a “compromise” bill that allowed the district to collect fees for two years to help pay for a groundwater sustainability study—what Hollon compares to “throwing some candy to kids in the backseat to quiet them on a long trip.” In late April, the district board voted to say “thanks, but no thanks” to the proposal. Miffed, Rose yanked the bill a few days later. “Why are the legislators throwing us down a dry well?” asks board president Backus. “They’re in the process of helping developers get water utility districts, but they’re not helping the Hays-Trinity district get powers equivalent to all the surrounding groundwater districts. There’s something else going on.” The sense that Rose is protecting development and real estate interests is widespread among the sustainability crowd. “The only reason I can see that Rose and [Sen. Jeff] Wentworth are so reluctant to grant the district the tools it needs to get the job done is they’re giving in to the real estate interests who want a weak district,” says Jim McMeans, a founder of Citizens Alliance for Responsible Development, a Wimberley-based group that promotes “sensible growth” and has won major concessions from developers. (Wentworth is a San Antonio Republican.) Rose is a real-estate agent with his parents' own Rose Real Estate in Drippings Springs. From 2004 to 2008, he received nearly $300,000 in campaign contributions from real estate interests and developers, according to the nonprofit watchdog Texans for Public Justice. One of Rose’s top donors is Bob Perry, a Houston homebuilder who primarily funds Republican candidates. Rose declined requests by phone, by e-mail and in person to be interviewed for this story. Whatever explains legislators’ inaction, it looks like western Hays County will have to wait until 2011, when another Legislature convenes, to address its water problems. “Sadly, I think it’s too late for them,” says Marbury. She quickly softens that statement. “They would have to throw caution to the wind ... and there would be a severe backlash from Realtors, developers, and current permit holders.” Hollon, the Wimberley native, knows what they’re up against. “We’ve got to come to terms with our growth,” he says. “Growth is fundamental to capitalism, our banking system and so forth, but it doesn’t make much sense ecologically speaking. That’s going to take some time to seep in.” _http://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=3047_ (http://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=3047) **************Recession-proof vacation ideas. Find free things to do in the U.S. (http://travel.aol.com/travel-ideas/domestic/national-tourism-week?ncid=emlcntustrav00000002)
