Issues Surrounding the Edwards Aquifer from the Edwards Aquifer website
by Gregg Eckhardt


from  http://www.edwardsaquifer.net/issues.html

A Brief Retrospective and a Summary

I am always surprised at how little and how slowly this page has to be changed. When I started this website in 1995, the primary issue that had to be resolved was how much users could pump, and the Edwards Aquifer Authority had been handed the job of allocating water rights. This question was not fully resolved until 2007, when the Edwards pumping cap was revised upwards to 572,000 acre-feet. Even so, there is still uncertainty regarding minimum necessary springflows and the pumping levels that would ensure them.

As the issue of pumping volume moved slowly toward resolution, a focus on Edwards water quality has emerged. It seems likely that ensuring water quality will take much longer to address than pumping did. After Senate Bill 1477 was passed in 1993, it seemed clear that after addressing pumping, the Edwards Aquifer Authority would eventually take on the role of developing regulations to protect Edwards water quality. But today, the issue is largely unresolved. There is disagreement whether this function should be the responsibility of the TCEQ or the EAA. In a State where private property rights are sacrosanct, regulators and lawmakers who would protect our natural resources find their hands tied at every turn. And the recent proliferation of groundwater conservation districts on the Edwards catchment area is bound to complicate matters by adding layers of competing jurisdiction. So the issue of regulating development and land use to protect Edwards water quality promises to be a source of controversy for decades.

In addition to an emerging focus on water quality, another of the main shifts in thinking about the Edwards has been toward viewing it as a living system instead of simply cold, wet limestone. For decades, aquifer science has failed to incorporate the living component, especially microbiology. This has led to misperceptions and a lack of appreciation for the value of the environmental services the Aquifer is providing. For example, officials and journalists often incorrectly state the Edwards does not filter water; in reality, the Edwards is a massive wastewater treatment plant that filters and purifies recharge water to a quality that is drinkable without further treatment. This occurs through physical and biological processes that are similar to those used in a conventional man-made plant, where the heart of the treatment system is a rich microbial community of organisms that transform and stabilize waste materials. Purification processes are occurring in the Edwards, but they have not been described or studied and we know very little about them. In the past, we viewed the Aquifer as simply a mechanistic flow system, and we looked to hydrogeologists for answers. In the future, we will view the Aquifer as a hard-working but fragile ecosystem, and we will tend to look more to biologists and chemists and water treatment experts for answers.

The Issues

In general, the framework in which we address issues surrounding the Edwards Aquifer involves the facts that:

- all the issues are complex and emotional;

- the timelines required to solve the problems are very long;

- the investments required are huge;

- the future is uncertain.

Most of the time, decision makers who face an uncertain future tend to make the timeline as short as possible and the investment as small as possible. In other words, they look for a quick, cheap fix. But water issues are not solved using this approach - they require long term commitments and very large investments. Moreover, it seems unlikely that we can use a traditional structural approach to build ourselves steel-and-concrete solutions like surface water reservoirs and recharge projects. We will have to THINK ourselves out of this one.

In general, water management issues for the Edwards Aquifer can be broadly classified as technical, legal, economic, and institutional. However, few concerns fit neatly into one category. For example, reuse of water at first seems like a technical issue, but on closer inspection it is clear this is mainly an institutional and cultural issue revolving around overcoming negative attitudes toward using recycled water.

Technical Issues

Since the Edwards has been one of the most studied aquifers in the world, most of the technical issues have already been tackled. Projects such as baseline predictions, quantification of Edwards resources, and mapping of the various zones have mostly already been performed and refined. But some things are still unclear, even after considerable study, and some of the unanswered questions are very basic.

• How many recharge features exist and where are they? Many are still unidentified, and access to private property is often difficult.

• How does the "bad water line" move in response to drought and pumping? Some experts maintain that once the bad water line moves, it will not return to its original position. Others disagree. The bottom line is we don't know what will happen if the Aquifer is drawn down below its historic low.

• Where are the hydrogeologic boundaries and how do they interact? In 2006 new research by Ron Green and others suggested there is a large area under Kinney county that deserves to be designated as a separate pool. Previously, it was thought to be part of the Uvalde pool. In the east, it has always been clear that San Marcos Springs does not react much to pumping in the San Antonio section, and many believe it deserves to be designated as a separate pool as well.

• How does the "Knippa Gap" affect flowpaths and well levels? We know the Gap is a natural barrier that affects the direction and volume of water flowing from the west into the San Antonio section of Aquifer, but not enough is known about how it works.

• How much water could be brought from the western Edwards pools to San Antonio without adversely affecting well levels and economies of San Antonio's neighbors?

• Will tracer analysis give us more detailed information on flowpaths and velocities? It seems likely, but research has been stalled by a lack of funds.

• What were "natural" flows to the bays and estuaries like and what are the in-stream flow needs today?

• What are the hydrogeologic connections to other aquifers like the Trinity? How much water is exchanged or recharged between them, and where does it occur?

• How do the natural treatment processes work that transform muddy brown recharge water into potable well water and sparkling springflows? Very little is known about the physical and biological processes occurring in the Edwards that result in potable water.

• Will a structural approach involving building more surface water reservoirs and recharge dams help address water quantity shortages? If so, where will the money come from? How do the economics of reuse and conservation compare with the structural approach?

• Will a cap on pumping to protect springflows and endangered species actually work? Many experts maintain the springs will periodically go dry even if no one pumps a single drop.

• Are the pumping limits and springflow requirements that have been established scientifically defensible? In the 1990s the Fish and Wildlife Service was charged with determining what springflow levels would result in "take" or "jeopardy" of endangered species, but subsequent research has suggested that flow rates much lower than previously thought would still be protective of endangered species habitats. We're still not really sure what flow rates are necessary, or how much pumping the Aquifer could actually sustain.

Legal Issues

To really get a grasp on the complicated legal issues involved, you need to check out the legislative history in the Laws and Regs section!   Some of the major legal issues for the aquifer are:

• How can we finally institute conjunctive management of surface waters and groundwaters? Today, the EAA regulates groundwater in the Edwards region, while the TCEQ regulates surface water. It's all the same water. Since surface water and groundwater are interconnected and inseparable, isn't conjunctive management the only logical approach?

• To what extent can we limit development or regulate land use in order to protect Edwards water quality? Will compensation be required, and who will pay?

• What agency has the legal authority and responsibility to develop water quality regulations? How do we deal with competing jurisdictions and agency boundaries that are set up along political, not hydrogeologic lines?

• Where can we get lawmakers with the gumption and foresight to tackle these issues without succumbing to pressure from powerful special interests?

• How can we mitigate the political costs of effective action? How can we convince people their lawmakers are doing what is best for everyone in the long run?

Economic Issues

Any technical, legal, or institutional changes we make will have profound economic impacts. Some of the economic questions and issues are:

• What is the value of value of water? Some say it is priceless, yet it has traditionally been so cheap that people always felt free to use whenever they wanted at any time. What price should be put on water?

• Who should pay for new or extra water brought into the region? Should it be the new users or everyone who benefits?

• What is the value of instream uses such as recreation and flows that exist simply to sustain aquatic ecosystems?

• What is the economic value of environmental services the Edwards is providing for free? How much are we willing to pay to protect the ability of the Edwards to provide treatment?

• Do we want an unrestricted water market where rights are bought and sold? If so, what kind of market will be efficient, fair, and effective? Currently, half of a person's water rights must remain with the land in perpetuity, and the other half can be sold. But what if the land use changes from agriculture to something like upscale retail, where the water rights are no longer needed or used? Should water rights holders then be permitted to sell those rights?

• When we limit pumping to protect springflows, who pays and who benefits? Doesn't this benefit certain people at the expense of others?

• If we limit development or regulate land use in recharge or catchment areas to protect water quality, will it be necessary to compensate landowners for lowered land values? Do we have to pay people not to pollute common resources? If so, who will pay, and how much?

• What costs have we already incurred or encouraged because of lawmaker's failure to act and our own failure to demand appropriate changes and Aquifer protections?

Institutional Issues

Perhaps the most difficult and the most important issues to deal with are institutional ones. These include the institution of culture which is very hard to change. We also have to deal with the fact that currently there are hundreds of management institutions involved, many of which care about an area only as large as their borders. Some of the issues are:

• How can we overcome the notion that use of groundwater is a God-given right and that every landowner has a "right" to free water?

• How can we overcome regional parochialisms and get everyone to see that we are all in this together? The agricultural, urban, and recreational users are often pitted one against the other, yet we really have only one common resource.

• How can we change negative cultural attitudes regarding the reuse of water? Tertiary treated wastewater effluent is of much higher quality than stormwater, and it could easily be made potable and used again, either directly or as Aquifer recharge. How do we convince people that water can be recycled and is just as good?

• What are society's priorities when water is scarce?

• What kind of management institution can we design that people will trust and accept?

• Don't we need the boundaries of management institutions to be defined along hydrogeologic lines instead of political ones? How does the recent proliferation of politically-drawn groundwater conservation districts complicate matters?

• How sort of institution do we need to implement conjunctive management of surface water and ground water? Will it be the EAA, the TCEQ, or some hybrid?

• If the primary responsibility of the EAA was to allocate groundwater rights, and if that task is essentially complete, and if responsibility for protecting water quality does not belong to the EAA, do we still need the EAA? Should it be disbanded or absorbed into the TCEQ?

• How can we build flexibility into institutions so they can adapt to new scientific understandings of Aquifer structures and functions?

Texas State Legislative Agendas regarding Water: Concerns and suggestions from Cheryl Gilpin, former EAA director elected from New Braunfels, Texas

 see Herald Zietung Guest Editorial with list  of leaders and their contacts:

Gilpin: When it comes to water issues, we’re all in it together

Posted: Friday, December 19, 2014 1:14 am

When it comes to water, local, regional and state level laws and rules and mechanisms  for avoiding financial conflicts of interest and avoiding fuzzy math (especially with separated bookkeeping, like Enron)  are big deal’s to taxpaying voters.     When it comes to avoiding water crisis and sustaining water for the public water security?

read more of this editorial online at
http://herald-zeitung.com/opinion/article_cf3a9c3e-874e-11e4-9f2f-e76ec5d7de24.html

Is the Edwards Aquifer Habtiat Conservation Plan a misleading name?

Top-Main Comal Spring  April 22, 2014 image by Cheryl Gilpin; bottom- typical flows before HCP approved, image from video on Edwards Aquifer  HCP website . 

Notice that Main Comal Spring was documented not flowing on April 22 when USGS gage level was 141 cfs cubic feet per second and stopped flowing for days the week before., Prior to that it would only flow intermittently during 24 hour periods earlier in April. Strangely on April 24 the spring was flowing slightly and flowing pretty well at the sidewalk corner spring on the same spring run, with a USFWS plankton net and lots of fountain darters around two days before no fountain darters were any where near these spring openings.  On April 29, once again the Main Comal Spring was not flowing at all for 24 hour periods and the area in front of the main spring was mostly dry.  It is apparent that parts of these flows can be adjusted at will, but at whose will? On May 1 the USGS streamflow gage way downstream was at 135 cfs.

 At average flows for previous  extreme drought periods in April  water level would be up above their waste lines. New Braunfels Citizens are serious about keeping our taxes low and making our city minimize risks and expenses to NB citizens. However, our town can't accomplish that if we set a priority on minimizing regulation and monitoring of regional pumping of the Edwards Aquifer and on our springruns.

The Edwards Aquifer Habitat Conservation Plan is actually a misleading name.  It should have been called a Plan to put more money into the pockets of over-allocated pumping permitees and extend periods of critically low aquifer levels  at the expense of citizens of New Braunfels in order to make the regions pumping permits worth more money for longer periods and not have any  conservation limitations on those users who will pay their highest rate.  Why don't we figure out why this is not working and go back to the drawing board instead of going along with plans that are based upon false assumptions that the EAA directors actually reduce pumping  permits during times of critical period when actually they do not and they offer the groundwater profiteers incentive and mechanisms to keep us in critical period levels instead of  actually having effective rules that work by minimizing critical period.  Those EAA critical period rules have been on the book since 2008 they never did reduce pumping as the legislature mandated and with the HCP assuming that they work as legislated,  the HCP strategies and extra legal agreements actually work to give further incentive and profit to the pumpers to keep our aquifer at critical period levels.

 

Why is that the case? It is because the pumping permitees were the first in Texas to be established as private groundwater marketers when the Edwards Aquifer act first started the Edwards Aquifer Authority in 1994.  But the groundwater marketing was intended in that legislation to be a privilege and an incentive for cooperation of large pumpers to go along with and support  the EAA Act. The EAA Act included language to keep that privilege tightly regulated but that has not come to be the case.  The EAA Act has language that states that the Edwards Aquifer pumping permits would not be considered as property rights owing buy down but the EAA directors have been doing there best to make that not the case either.  Some of their permitting and critical period rules actually violate state legislature mandates to avoid regulating the groundwater marketing as much as possible and to maximize their profits and treat their permits in way that will turn them permanently and irreversibly into property rights owing buy down with public money, the HCP strategy to pay back volunteers to reduce pumping is going to help make that the case and Steve Ramsey the New Braunfels representative on the HCP steering committee is now begging to start the Voluntary irrigation suspension because he is misled to think that there are not other options and does not realize it will irreversibly impact all future plans to reduce any of the aquifer permits because buy back will always then be required to honor all the EAA permits as owed pay back once pay back for reduction actually starts for the few volunteers pumpers now in its program once the program is triggered to start the reductions and puts pay back money in their pockets to reduce their pumping permit then it set a legal precedent that will irreversible change on how we treat all the EAA permits from then all pumping permit reduction will legally require pay back with our public dollars no matter how over allocated or poorly regulated or how poorly suited they are regarding wise water use.  That will mean pumpers will have even more incentive to keep our aquifer and springlfows dangerously low and managing to avoid that will become less likely to accomplish.

Is the strategy with a title that includes "voluntary irrigation suspension" also a misleading name ?

Actually the Voluntary irrigation suspension program is not really done as these pumpers were volunteering to give up something because we will be paying them back and forever turning all the overallocated  pumping permits into property rights that will require pay back with our public money whenever reduced whether voluntarily or required and whenever they can not not market their permit amounts or withdraw their permitted amounts  due to draining of their wells under their land.

Really there are things we can do to keep our aquifer levels from being so low that they trigger this voluntary program. However, once it is first triggered, there will be no turning back and that will be less likely because we will give much more profit and incentive to the pumpers to keep our springflows and aquifer very very low without considering the risks and harms that causes, they are only considering how to maximize their profits. They can tweek our springflows to make us beg for whatever they want us to do because of the lack of proper regulation on their pumping and groundwater marketing and because of HCP strategies agreements with our city of New Braunfels leaders  that are now helping them accomplish this. Our city leaders are going along with the HCP without considering how to reduce expense and risk to our Comal Springflows and to citizens and it is not the pumpers best intrest to figure that out because they profit by imposing crisis and extending critical periods.  City leaders only listening to NBU should realize that risks and expenses to our citizens are not their best intrest to consider our leaders need to protect us citizens and do the home work themselves to minimize harms to our Comal Springs and our citizens.

When HCP strategies and modeling ignore how our EAA director made rules are actually working to make the regions pumping permits worth more money for longer periods and not have any  conservation limitations on those users who will pay their highest rate they present great harms and risks for our spring flows and expense for citizens of New Braunfels.  However, the Edwards Aquifer HCP stakeholders are not trying very hard to honestly present the harms and risks to us and actually knowingly avoid modeling and reporting harms to our springruns and citizens here in New Braunfnels. Since it is obvious now that the HCP stakeholders were giving our town information based upon their modeling with false assumtions,  why don't we figure out why this is not working and insist the regions HCP steering committee right now hold emergency meeting to better prepare and minimize up coming critical periods for this summer.  They should go back to the drawing board instead of going along with plans that are based upon false assumptions that the EAA directors actually reduce pumping  permits during times of critical period when actually they do not and they offer the groundwater profiteers incentive and mechanisms to keep us in critical period levels instead of  actually having effective rules that work by minimizing critical period.  Those EAA critical period rules have been on the book since 2008 they never did reduce pumping as the legislature mandated and with the HCP assuming that they work as legislated,  the HCP strategies and extra legal agreements actually work to give further incentive and profit to the pumpers to keep our aquifer at critical period levels.

A false map is put into the HCP 2013 report after the pubic comment period:

 

The HCP 2013 report even included false information about the HCP impacts on the Comal river which were not part of the report seen for public comment but added in just before the steering committee voted to approve that and finalize the report and while refusing to hear public comment about the addition before they voted at the meeting held here in New Braunfels last March 2014. Our own New Braunfels steering committee member did not even request the committee hear the comments about that my husband the assistant director of the Edwards Aquifer Research and Data Center and I former EAA director from New braunfels brought to give before the vote was made. We had observed the mapped section of the comparison in late summer 2013 when the map was dated and also the morning of the meeting and the river there had much mor impact than the map indicated there back in July and still the day of the meeting. but that incorrect mpa showing less than 10% reduction in habitat is still in the HCP report and was never seen for public comment. 

HCP Drought Contigency Planning is it happening through HCP adaptive management to minimize drought impacts this summer?  How is that working?

At the Edwards Aquifer Habitat Conservation Plan HCP implementation steering committee meeting in March 2014 held in New Braunfels the steering committee approved a recommendation to set up the HCP drought contingency planning team with no hydrology or water resource experts only educators and communications experts and to set up the drought contingency scope to be to conduct outreach and public relations to keep the public positive about the HCP.  Andrew Samson from Texas State on the HCP implementation committee suggested and it was approved for the planning team not to be called a drought contingency planning team since in reality that would not be its scope.  However, there has been no planning for drought  as is required of this HCP.   Preparing to minimize impact of drought does not seem to be on their radar.  I agree with Andrew Sansom about not misleading people with a title that is not what they are doing.  

Can we change the direction of the Edwards Aquifer Authority and the HCP now? YES!!! 

But that won't happen unless New BRaufnels quickly backs out of the agreement they made based upon HCP false assumtions and quickly makes the HCP stakeholders develop a strategy that actually is serious about enough water conservation and pumping restriction to minimize  the length and severity of aquifer critical periods.

Perhaps if groundwater marketing were considered only a priveledge and reward for not being at critically low aquifer levels and not allowed during critically low aquifer levels and if those marketing groundwater were not allowed to serve on the EAA board or the EA HCP steering committee, then our public dollars and decisions would be more about properly managing water supply to minimize risks to people and the ecosystems.  The EAA Act was established first and foremost for protection of endangered species and for protection of  the aquifer water quality and quantity it was not set up to establish the Edwards Aquifer Authority as a groundwater marketing agency which is now what most of the EAA directors consider as their primary role.   Citizens need to insist their leaders do our their homework for our town about our water resources and insist our leaders urge and aggressively insist that regional , stakeholder and state and federal laws and rule making and strategies minimize harm to our springflows and our economy and wildlife and human health and insist the EAA directors and the EAA stakeholder process follow legal mandates protective of springflows and springrun water quality and  get back on the right track to make us more resilient for upcoming drought conditions.   

 Preserving the Comal Springflows and minimizing damage to Landa Park as Native American Sacred Site preservation:

These springflows are important for endangered species and for the cultural preservation of the Comal River as a sacred paleo and native American site. I went to a Catholic high school but I take great great pride and do not hesitate to embrace my native American cultural background and wish more of my neighbors would do the same because that is where we can learn from thousands of years of wisdom about how to live and manage our work and homes while conserving and sustaining our water resources and springflows for our future and for our children and children’s children, For the past few generations many of our elderly have started dying young we have lost their wisdom we need to learn the lessons to be found in the artifacts of the Landa Lake area now under going much destruction, where are our artifacts what can we learn from them?  Maybe if we figure that out we will see how unwise current leadership has been and support setting better priorities.

Sincerely, Cheryl Gilpin, former Edwards Aquifer Authority director elected from New Braunfels