Proposed pumpage limit draws fire in Kerr County

KERRVILLE — Keeping up with the testimony at a Texas Water Development Board hearing here last week required the roughly 75 people who attended to digest a smorgasbord of abbreviations.

The hearing's purpose was for Kerr County and others to dispute a regional planning group's projections about future groundwater availability, projections slated for inclusion in the state's long-term water management plans.

Critics say the group's data will shortchange Kerr County on groundwater allotments.

Specifically — and this is where the alphabet soup comes in — the Plateau Water Planning Group, or PWPG, and Upper Guadalupe River Authority, or UGRA, appealed against the Desired Future Conditions document, or DFC, adopted last year in Groundwater Management Area 9 — that's GMA9.

The DFC document calls for “no net increase in average drawdown” through 2060 for the Edwards-Trinity Plateau Aquifer in GMA9, a region covering all or parts of Bandera, Bexar, Blanco, Comal, Hays, Kendall, Kerr, Medina and Travis counties. And that translated into a proposed annual pumpage limit for Kerr County that was too restrictive, unrealistic and unenforceable, critics argued.

Locals had asked for more time to study the issue, but a GMA9 committee in August 2008 voted 8-1 to adopt the DFC, which isn't required to be submitted to the state until September.

Delaying action would have allowed newer data to be used, said Diane McMahon, board president of the Headwaters Groundwater Conservation District — or HGCD — at last week's hearing.

She cast the DFC dispute as “an honest difference of opinion.”

Water levels in the highly porous aquifer often fluctuate due to rain, drought and heavy use, they note, and total pumping can't be regulated effectively because of the prevalence of small, private wells that lack meters.

Noting the aquifer's water table fluctuates as much as 90 feet annually, the plaintiffs' hydrology expert, Charles Kreitler, testified that tracking spring flows would better gauge its health — and provide a better trigger for pumpage limits when the springs get too low — than the current practice oof observing a single monitoring well.

Legislation adopted in 2001 charged the Texas Water Development Board with delineating the state's aquifers and creating groups to manage the groundwater.

In 2005, the Legislature ordered groundwater conservation districts within the 16 management areas to work together to identify “desired future conditions” for use in calculating “managed available groundwater,” or MAG, values in each area. The MAGs are used for regional water plans, groundwater management and permitting.

When the zero-drawdown goal for GMA9 was entered into state computer models, they calculated a managed available groundwater allotment of 1,263 acre-feet a year for Kerr County.

That figure was far below previous sustainability estimates of the amount that could be pumped, Kerr County Commissioner Jonathan Letz noted. Current pumping from wells might already exceed that total, he said.

Based on an average daily household consumption of 437 gallons, just 2,578 families — out of a county population of about 49,000 — would consume the entire amount, said Letz, who is also chairman of the PWPG board.

He said adopting such a low managed available groundwater limit would abridge residents' property rights and cause problems for the headwaters district, which would be required to cap pumping at 1,263 acre-feet a year but prohibited from denying new permits for small domestic and livestock wells.

Also testifying was GMA9 Committee President Ron Fieseler, who defended the desired future conditions data and said critics failed to prove it was not “reasonable,” which he called the only basis for an appeal allowable in the Texas Water Code.

Fieseler said his GMA9 panel shares concerns about protecting Guadalupe River spring flow, so it “set a DFC that would discourage drilling of new wells” and provide for minimal allowable pumping.

He called it reasonable to manage the aquifer using one monitoring well.

The state water board is expected to consider the county appeal at its January meeting. The appeal contends the GMA9 vote on desired future conditions for two smaller aquifers, the Hickory and Ellenburger, was illegal because inadequate notice was given on the agenda for the 2008 meeting.

Fieseler didn't comment on that. The GMA9 panel has yet to set desired future conditions for the other two aquifers within its borders, the Middle Trinity and Lower Trinity.

Disputes over desired future conditions have arisen in several other planning areas around Texas, officials said, but only one other appeal has been filed with the state.

Zeke MacCormack - Express-News