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Public hearing Thursday in WimberleyIf you want to learn more or have something to say about how you want the groundwater district board to manage your groundwater for the next five years, this would be the time to speak up
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Click here for a look at the groundwater district's regulatory page, top water users of 2009, and aquifer-related scientific reports
A second public hearing will be held Thursday, Oct. 21, on the Hays Trinity Groundwater Management Plan. The five-member board of the Hays Trinity Groundwater Conservation District will take comments and testimony from interested citizens. The meeting starts at 6 p.m. at the Wimberley Community Center.
There are two items on the posted agenda: 1) Discuss and possible action on the (District's) FY 2011 Budget (Jimmy Skipton-Board pres.), and 2) Discuss and possible action on Management Plan (Board VP-David Baker).
The public will be allowed 3 minutes to make comments on both items.
Some background:
The HTGCD's current management plan calls for 3,713 acre-feet (acf) of pumping and the district estimates it is currently pumping 5,671 annually (2,371 acf non-exempt, 2,403 acf exempt, 897 acf in agriculture, 286 from the Lower Trinity with an additional 900-1,500 acf of pumping not registered or permitted and unreported.
(We like using gallons rather than acre-feet. An acre-foot equals about 326,000 gallons. It's easier to grasp the great volumes of groundwater use we're talking about here. Current estimated annual pumping of 5,671 acre-feet equals to about 1.84 Billion gallons.)
The 30-foot DFC (Desired Future Conditions, commonly referred to as aquifer drawdown) policy if carried forward would allow 9,155 acre-feet of total available groundwater with projections of somewhere between 4,000 acre-feet and 6,900 acre-feet in exempt (non-regulated private wells) growth to be subtracted from the 9,155 to establish the Managed Available Groundwater (MAG) under the state's 50-year planning period.
Even with the proposed 30-foot drawdown, the district will most likely be issued a negative Managed Available Groundwater (MAG) amount for non-exempt pumping permitted wells. The Texas Water Development Board will estimate current pumping and projected pumping to be subtracted from the Total Available Groundwater amount to determine the final MAG for the HTGCD.
The short of it is – according to most experts in the field – we are currently pumping more water than is sustainable from the Trinity Aquifer in Hays County and the district faces a scenario where it may not have much more to parcel out. (This partially explains the mad scramble to import water from outside sources.)
With the 6,500 wells in the district, people's water wells are going dry now during short dry periods (55 reported to the district last summer) and springs are drying up after very short droughts. Jacob's Well the largest perennial spring in the Trinity Aquifer stopped flowing last Summer midway through an 18-month drought. Jacob's Well flowed through the entire drought the 1950's and was measured at 2.6 cubic feet per second in 1958 before the end of the longest drought on record. (Gunnar M. Brune, Springs of Texas)
Even with such a dramatic increase in allowable pumping under a 30-foot drawdown policy, there is no water left for the current permittees to expand their pumping. We are in a deficit pumping scenario now and losing one to two feet a year in the aquifers water levels under current pumping, which is at least 2,000 acre-feet more than the current management plan calls for.
3 comments:
Roundup should attribute these articles to their source. There are a lot of unsubstantiated claims being made.
Consider, for example, "according to most experts in the field". Is the author is referring to someone besides himself and two other former board members of the HTGCD or would mentioning names take away from the agenda?
The continued focus on Jacob's Well suggests that David Baker is the author. David Baker was exposed by one speaker at the 10/21/2010 HTGCD meeting in Wimberley as being the person behind the "resolutions" submitted from various organizations. Baker holds himself out as representing one entity while actively lobbying for the interests of another entity. He operates through:
i) misrepresentation as to who he is representing
ii) misrepresentation as to facts
iii) omission of facts
iv) drumming up and preying upon fears of residents
Baker was encouraging the HTGCD Board to delay sending out a management plan. It came to light that Baker had surreptiously already sent a management plan of his own design to TWDB without knowledge or approval by HTGCD board - yet another example of misrepresentation on a government body and to a government body. Perhaps Baker thought TWDB/TCEQ would proceed with his secretly submitted plan under the misrepresentation that it was the HTGCD plan while he stalled HTGCD from actually sending out the true HTGCD plan. Baker had no authority to send out a plan on behalf of HTGCD without the approval of the other board members but that won't stop him from making misrepresentations to others.
Another tidbit that came out at the meeting: Baker's residency in district 4 was challenged. As a nonresident, he would not have even been eligible to run for district 4 office. Baker tried to unconvincingly deny his lack of residency. Perhaps Round Up can do a little investigative reporting on Baker's residency before someone else breaks the news.
WOW! If true, David Baker has some 'splainin' to do. I heard the recordings at the meeting and they sounded quite bad for him. He more or less dismissed the accusations without any real comment. I read silence to be an admission.
Does anyone know what happened to the deal with the County and the WWVA over the purchase of some land adjacent to Jacob’s Well? I was told it is on hold and there are some disturbing rumors circulating.
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