Drought raises economic development questions

When the San Antonio Water System earlier this week staged a presentation to business customers, some in attendance were worried about something other than the damage to the region's farms and how businesses could conserve water.

They wondered if the city's economic development image was drying up and blowing away.

High taxes, unavailable skilled workers, uncertain energy supplies and bad schools are all brick walls against business investments. The lack of long-term availability of water can kill the prospects of businesses moving to San Antonio just as fast.

Water has been an economic development issue for San Antonio since the seven-year drought in the 1950s. That was the first time reliance on the Edwards Aquifer as the sole drinking water source came into question.

The City Council vote in 1976 to decline a controversial contract for Canyon Lake water pushed the issue further down the road. An idea in the 1970s to build a reservoir in Wilson County never moved.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the proposed Applewhite reservoir along the Medina River in South Bexar County failed at the ballot box, and we now can see the reason why. Applewhite would have been a shallow lake. How much water would be there this summer after the worst two-year dry spell in the city's history?

Still, the water treatment plant that would have accompanied Applewhite might be handy now. Nearby supplies of brackish underground water could be treated both for San Antonio and communities to the south.

Rather than pursue surface water, SAWS turned to conservation and recycling. Dams were built to the west of the city to guide more water into the Edwards Aquifer. Those programs served SAWS customers well. The utility pumps the same amount of aquifer water it did 20 years ago despite a 50 percent increase in customers.

City policy also has been smart. The lawn and landscape watering restrictions — Stages 1 through 4 — do not at any point interfere with business and manufacturing processes. That is not an option, a powerful message to the rest of the world.

Yet, as former Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce Chairman Brenda Vickrey Johnson said at the presentation this week, SAWS needs to show the outside world it has options other than the Edwards.

SAWS maintains a 50-year plan. Projects have gone onto and then off of that plan. Mostly recently, a deal with the Lower Colorado River Authority to import water from LCRA's basin fell through.

SAWS is working on non-Edwards proposals, mainly involving desalinization of nearby groundwater and seawater. Both require treatment plants and pipelines. Desalinized ocean water must be pumped a long distance, all of it uphill.

That would incur expense like San Antonio has never seen. A water treatment plant alone is $1 billion, said Greg Flores, SAWS public affairs vice president. SAWS likely would lose its low water rates, now second only to El Paso among large Texas cities.

Not moving forward, which means living with a limited supply, also would have a cost — no more economic growth

By David Hendricks, Express News