Love the rain, love the water, but is it enough for our aquifer?

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Photo courtesy Tim Raines

The three-day For Love of Water (FlOW) conference at the Wimberley Community Center, that brought together some of the region's best minds and artists and examined the many facets of our water conditions and best management practices, ended Sunday morning with a blessing of Jacob's Well, the lifeblood of Wimberley's Cypress Creek and Blue Hole. It was not lost to the more than 200 attendees that three days of soaking rain preceded the conference and lasted through most of the day Saturday.

Holistic Management International-Texas gets a big hat tip for presenting this well-rounded, high energy confab. Thanks to executive director Amy Norman of Johnson City, conference organizer Peggy Cole of Wimberley, and the many financial backers and board members of HMI. For more information, visit HMI's web site: http://www.hmitexas.org/

While on the subject, Ray Schiflett, affectionately known as Wimberley's Weather Man (meteorology is his hobby), reports that the Wimberley area has nearly caught up to its average rainfall amount for this time of the year – 23 inches so far compared to the average of around 25 inches. That's good news, for a change! Thanks, Ray.

Not to rain on Ray's rain parade, but Wes Schumacher, a hydogeologist at the Hays Trinity Groundwater Conservation District, reminds us that only a very small percentage of rainfall actually makes it below ground to replenish to our groundwater levels – only about 3.6%. That's according to the latest Texas Water Development Board computer model of the Trinity Aquifer.

"It's a rather tortuous journey for a water molecule to make it all the way down to the aquifer," Schumacher said. "Because the vadose zone (subsurface rock) has been dry for so long . . . (it will not be) a continuous pathway from the surface to the aquifer. We will need a lot of these rain events to wet the entire vadose zone. If we get a wet fall we can start to see the aquifer levels rebound."